Straw Hats stuck in Memories
by tmb1112
Summary: A little girl with the power of the Memory-Memory Fruit traps the Straw Hat crew and decides to make them witness each other's most painful memories. Why? Well, she's a twisted little girl. Has memories from all members of the crew.
1. Chapter 1

"What are you doing?!" Usopp screamed as he started to fall through the ground. The entire Straw Hat crew realized that the dirt beneath them was getting blacker and losing its solid substance.

"I ate the Memory-Memory fruit," the little girl standing in front of them snickered. Zoro tried to jump out of the blackness, but there was nowhere to spring off of, he was sinking fast and there was no time as the black mush seemed to turn into nothing and they fell through the ground.

"Ahhh!" the pirates screamed as they fell.

"You just had to piss her off Nami!" Usopp complained as he fell down next to the screaming woman with orange hair.

"How was I supposed to know that twerp ate a Devil Fruit?" the woman responded angrily.

"We're in the New World," Robin said, falling straight up as if it didn't bother her at all, "you should expect these things before you pick fights with children," the woman with black hair giggled as Nami's face turned red from embarrassment.

"Ooh," Chopper said as his head hit the ground, or whatever substance he was now on top of. "Wait, that didn't hurt, why didn't that hurt?" they had fallen a good distance and the others were confused as well.

"Hey, let us out of here!" Luffy shouted at the sky and extended his arm up, but it just went high into the blackness and disappeared. He stopped throwing it up and his arm came flying back before snapping to normal.

"Hehehehe," the little girl's voice started coming in from all sides of them. "Lalala, I bet you want to know all about my Memory-memory fruit," she giggled.

"No, not really," Usopp, Zoro, and Franky all said while waving their arms in front of their faces.

"Yohohoho, I would like to know, cutie-chan," Brook stated up at the black sky above them. "Oh and after, may I see your panties?" Nami kicked him in the side of the skull so hard after he asked and the skeleton slammed into the weird floor that didn't hurt him like he thought it would.

"Well," she continued, obviously annoyed by the responses. The girl's voice suddenly got very dark and she spoke in an evil tone as she laughed, "I take the memories that hurt you the most, and I make you watch them. I bet you all have some of those," everyone in the dark space froze up and the girl watching smiled insanely, receiving a better reaction than she could've hoped for.

_"ACE!"_

_"BELLEMERE!"_

_"MOM!"_

The voices started screaming from all around them, each of the members recognizing their own voice or the voice of someone next to them. Luffy and Nami froze up almost immediately after the noises started.

All the sounds stopped at the same time and everyone stopped spinning around to look in front of them where the blackness was forming into something else. There was a cliff covered in green grass, looking over the water. A little inland there was a forest, but there were two boys right outside of the trees that made everyone gasp.

"Is that..." Sanji started, the cigarette dropping from his mouth.

_"Stronger and stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger and stronger, and even stronger!"_

The crew members were staring at the little boy with the straw hat who was sobbing with his head down in the grass. He was shouting 'stronger' over and over again and they didn't know why, but a few of them weren't looking at their captain when he was obviously a lot younger. Some of them were staring at the slightly older boy with freckles on his face who was standing next to him.

"Ace?" Chopper whispered.

"This is seriously messed up," Zoro said and turned his gaze to the sky, looking for a way to escape from this place, but they were trapped and he saw no way out.

_"That way I can protect anything and everybody. I don't want to lose to anyone."_

The little boy in the memory took a short pause and everyone turned to their present-day captain who was walking forwards towards the older boy in the image. Luffy was extending his arm out, reaching towards Ace and his usual cheerful expression was gone as his lips were quivering.

"Luffy, he's not," Nami started to take a step towards him but Robin held out an arm and halted her. The girl looked at the older woman who shook her head, her hair covering her eyes.

_"Please, Ace, don't die!"_

As the words left the little boy's mouth, the crew stopped their movements and stared at the scen in front of them in shock. They couldn't believe something like that had happened, and yet Luffy just took another step towards the image of his angry brother.

_"Baka! Worry about yourself!"_ The boy punched Luffy on the top of the head, _"I'm much stronger than you! Listen Luffy..."_

Everyone stared at Ace with wide-eyes, not believing their eyes. Some Devil Fruit powers were ridiculous, but this one was almost unbelievable.

_"I WILL NEVER DIE!" _The proclamation echoed around the walls over and over again and the crew stared at Ace.

"Did he really say that?" Usopp whispered. He knew Luffy was having it tough when he heard the news two years before, but now he understood just how much it must have torn their captain apart inside.

The image in front of them started to swirl around and twist as it scattered around. "No, Ace!" Luffy extended his arm towards a wisp of memory as it swirled away from him, but his fingers went right through the strand, it dissolving as soon as it was touched.

_"I bet you want to punch him Franky," _the shipwright looked up to his left and saw a huge fishman speaking. A few others looks over at that but it was already tearing apart as another image was forming beneath it, this time everyone recognized who the person was.

The cyborg tried looking back for his old teacher, but the fishman who taught him everything was nowhere to be found. Instead he looked back down at the long-nosed kid who was running up a path surrounded by grassy fields. "Look it's me," Usopp said with a proud smile.

His grin faded as he saw the tears streaming down his young face, _"Pirates are coming! Pirates are coming!" _the boy with the yellow bandanna on his head ran up to a building on top of a hill and threw open the door. The boy was smiling even though he had tears in his eyes which confused the crew for a few seconds longer until the memory now showed the inside of the house.

_"Usopp, you mustn't shout,"_ a man in white scrubs tried to tell the boy who pushed past him and ran up to the bed.

"Is that your..." Nami started to ask the man standing next to her and Usopp nodded, a frown on his face as he stared at the picture in front of him.

_"Dad's come to take us away!" _kid Usopp said to the woman lying on the bed. Telling by her long nose, the crew knew who she was and Chopper could instantly tell she was dying. The small reindeer looked over at his friend who forced himself to look on the bright side of the situation.

"Hey, at least I get to see my mom again right?" he said in a broken up laugh. "Right Luffy, it was great seeing them again huh?" the captain was staring at Usopp's memory and realized what he was saying.

"Oh yeah, I guess you're right," Luffy responded and smiled thinking back on the memory of his older brother. "Wait, you're dad!" the man in the straw hat shouted in surprise, "Yasopp's there?! Does that mean Shanks is here too?!"

"No," Usopp said with a sigh, "that was a lie."

They all looked back ahead of them where Usopp was crying next to the woman lying in bed.

_Stop talking nonsense, Usopp," _the woman with the long pointy nose scolded the boy.

_"It's not,"_ the kid in the image, who looked like he couldn't have been older than eight or nine years old, had to stop talking because he couldn't breathe for a second. _"When mom recovers, he'll take us all out to sea."_

_"You're father won't be coming back."_

"Is that true?" Sanji said furiously, "He left his wife and son here and didn't come back?!"

"It is," Usopp sighed while staring at his mother, trying to look at her as long as he could before she would disappear from his sight again, "and I resented him for a long time because of that. I decided that when I became a pirate, if I ever married and had children, I wouldn't leave them like he did." Everyone was speechless at his statement.

"Usopp-san, I am truly impressed." Brook said while looking back at the child. He could see how hard young Usopp was trying to bring up his dying mother's spirits and it made his heart twitch, although he doesn't have a heart because he's a skeleton.

"But I thought you said you really wanted to meet your father?" Nami asked.

"I do," Usopp replied with a smile, "don't get me wrong, I've forgiven him. Just at the time, and for a while after, it really upset me that he wasn't there. When we meet up with Shanks's crew, he's the one I'm going to fight." Usopp balled a fist and held it in front of him, "And I'm going to show him just how strong I've become."

_"...I'm still proud to have been married to your father."_

"That's sweet," Robin said looking at the woman. "She must have really loved him."

Usopp nodded while watching his younger self try to lie again to his mom. _"There's this legendary medicine that can cure all diseases."_

_"Don't be stupid, you dream too much."_

"At least your lying skill has gotten a little better from back then," Franky said to the sniper but Usopp didn't look at him, the frown was back on his face and a single tear was dripping out of his eye. The cyborg suddenly felt like the atmosphere had changed and he was the only one who hadn't received the memo; he backed away and just watched the scene in silence.

Now the kid in the flashback was crying all over his mother's bed, snot coming out of his mouth as tears poured down his face. _"So what if I'm stupid, I like to dream! Cuz I'm the son of a pirate!"_

_"Do become a brave man like your father."_

Everyone watched and lowered their bottom jaws a little as they saw the woman in the image slowly start closing her eyes. "Mom," Usopp whispered, watching the woman he loved so much die a second time. He couldn't keep the tears from spilling but he kept it silent as the water started coming out of his eyes and dropping to the ground.

The man felt an arm across his back and a hand put itself on his right shoulder. "That was a tough one to watch," the pirate looked to see his captain standing next to him with an arm across his back. "But you are brave just for watching it," some of the others were surprised at how serious Luffy was and how he was saying just the right thing to stop Usopp from crying any further.

"I'm sure she would be proud of the man you've become," Robin said and the long-nosed pirate smiled and nodded.

The memory in front of them started to twist and they looked around as the whole house they were in started to fall apart. Huge chunks of the walls were drifting apart from each other, leaving huge black gaps before even the walls started to thin out into wisps and disappear.

_"AHHHH!" _the crew looked up, hearing Zoro's voice coming from the sky, but only saw a small blurry image of him. Something was tearing apart his body, ripping him over and over, shooting blood everywhere. It didn't look too long ago, and the man's clothes were soaked in blood.

"Zoro!" Luffy and Chopper shouted while looking up at the fragment before it slipped away like the other memories around it. "When was that?" Luffy asked the green-haired swordsman.

"Does it matter?" Zoro asked, trying to avoid the subject.

"Look," Book pointed to their left and it seemed like one of the small wisps floating around them was getting bigger and bigger. It suddenly flooded the room and the crew realized they were standing on top of the waves, but they weren't falling through the water.

"This is weird," Usopp said as he looked around. The all heard a loud toot coming in one direction and they looked down the water to see a city most of them recognized except for Brook. "Water 7!" the sniper shouted.

"Look it's Puffing Tom," Nami pointed at the sea train and Franky's eyes went wide.

The cyborg turned away from the train and looked down, realizing they were right next to the tracks. He finished turning and he couldn't breathe, "It's, me," he muttered out and the crew turned to see a teenager standing in the middle of the tracks.

"Oooh, look it's the frog that does the front crawl!" Luffy pointed at the toad on the small boat next to Franky.

The cyborg looked to only be about eighteen in the memory, but there was something else weird. "Wait a second," Chopper looked closer at the body of the boy in front of him. Franky's orange shirt was unbuttoned and he wasn't wearing pants as usual, so the doctor had a good look at his body, "You're not a robot here," he said and the rest of the crew looked closer and realized the reindeer was right.

"Don't worry," Franky said in a low voice that the crew hadn't heard in a long time, "I will be soon."

"What are you..." Usopp's eyes went wide as he looked slowly back over at the sea train that was approaching fast, tooting its horn a few times to make the boy move.

_"Stay there, Yokosuna,"_ the teenager in the flashback spoke to the frog on the boat.

"Don't tell me," Sanji said while looking over at the robot, "you stood in front of the train?" He almost laughed and would have if it wasn't for the grim face Franky was making. On both the memory version of him, and the man standing next to them, he had guilt written all over his face.

"Why would you..." Nami couldn't finish her sentence as the boy began screaming and drawing the huge bazooka on his back. The train seemed to have sped up as it raced towards the sixteen or seventeen year old

_"Stop Puffing Tom. Where are you taking your creator?!"_

The boy shot once and watched it hit the nose of the train, doing no damage at all. As he shot more rounds at the oncoming vehicle, Robin turned to him, "The creator of the Puffing Tom, was Tom on board that train?" The man nodded and she continued, "I see, this is when he was on the way to Eneis Lobby."

Usopp remembered when the CP9 agents talked about how Tom was captured in front of Franky. _They took his teacher and sent him to Impel Down,_ the man felt bad for his cyborg friend. The teenager seemed to have run out of bullets and he threw his weapon to the side as the train got closer.

_"I won't let you pass." _The train was almost at him now and a few of the weaker spirited crew members looked away. _"Give Tom-San back! Stop, Sea-TRAIN!" _Franky screamed and the train rammed straight into him at full speed.

Everyone thought he was going to be hit and the memory was going to end, but it seemed to slow down as the train wasn't able to plow through Franky so easily. Zoro was amazed that the boy was powerful enough to even wrap his hands around the front rail of the train as it hit him.

The man looked at his former self, showing the same look of regret that the young man had on his face. Young Franky dragged his feet into the tracks, trying hard not to let the train go any farther.

"You held it for a long time," Chopper commented as he looked back.

"No," Franky stated but no one looked away from the scene to look at the man speaking. "All of this happened in about a second," they watched as Franky lost his grip and the train smashed into him, his face distorting as cracking sounds were heard all over, blood rushing out of him and the memory started to deteriorate as he was thrown from the spot, high up in the air.

The crew looked up to watch him come back down, but the blue sky started getting ripped apart and the water beneath them started turning into the black ground again. "Quickly, let's get out of here," Nami suggested and looked around for a way out.

"Where even is here?" Zoro asked in an annoyed voice. They looked around some more but couldn't see anything except wisps of memories that had whispers coming from them.

"Look," the skeleton musician pointed at a memory and it started to form. "Ah, I knew it, that's the next one," the little wisp got larger and larger and the sounds coming from it got louder.

_"Looks like we got wiped out."_

Brook looked to his right and saw a man he thought he'd never see again. Blood was all over the man, and a blade covered in purple liquid lay next to him.

"Who are these people?" Chopper asked looking around.

"My crew," Brook whispered in response and everyone turned to the talking skeleton. "This is right after we were defeated, for the last time."

_"Their weapons were poisoned."_

The man next to that one spoke, _"Looks like we're all gonna die."_

Many of the men on the deck that they were on were already lifeless and dead, but a large number of them were breathing in staggered breaths, trying to hang on as long as they could.

_"As pirates, we're always prepared to die... but, to think not one person would survive,"_ a man lying on his back on the brink of death managed to speak between raspy breaths.

"This looks painful," Robin stated sadly.

"The poison didn't hurt as much as knowing I had let my entire crew die." Brook said, tears starting to pour out of his empty eye sockets. "My captain entrusted the crew to me, and I failed him too."

_"Laboon."_

_ "Laboon!"_

A few of the men rose at the sound of that name and tried to live just a little longer. The whole crew knew about Brook's crews' promise to the huge whale, but they had no idea how dedicated each member was. Men on the brink of death were dragging themselves up so that they wouldn't fail to return to Laboon, so that the whale wouldn't think they abandoned him.

_"Brook, about that Revive-Revive Fruit."_

_"Who knows, I've never died before but, I have an idea."_

The Straw Hats recognized that voice and turned around to see a man in his thirties with a large afro on his head.

"Brook?" Luffy asked, looking at the man with a confused look and then back at the skeleton. "But, you're not dead."

"I believe Franky said it best when he said, 'I will be soon.'" Everyone looked away from the talking skeleton and back to the deck of the ship they were standing on.

_"We're gonna die anyways, so let's have some fun,"_ the living version of Brook pulled himself up on his knees and reached into his shirt pocket. _"Do you guys wanna sing? If the Revive-Revive Fruit will really bring me back to life. I'll deliver it to him without fail."_

"That's the tone dial," Sanji said remembering when the skeleton pulled the object from his skull. "Wait a second, that song we heard during the party, you made that now... then, here?" He confused himself but the skeleton understood and nodded his head.

The crew around Brook seemed to like the idea and everyone who could move started getting up. Some members helped lift their hurt nakama who couldn't move but still wanted to sing and soon many of the crew were smiling and getting ready.

Captain Brook continued, _"The song that Laboon, the captain, and all of us loved. Waiting for us at the cape, never knowing when we will return, our nakama, Laboon!"_

_"Great idea!"_

_ "Yeah... you guys... make sure not to fall until we're done!"_

_ "Let him hear it."_

_ "Let's give Laboon the Rumbar Pirates' once in a lifetime show."_

The Straw Hat crew members watched as four other of Brook's nakama pulled out string instruments just like the captain. Everyone else was just standing around their friends' dead bodies and smiling, ready to sing.

The Brook in the memory looked at the others and they nodded at him. He tapped his foot four times before sitting at and playing on the piano that was on the deck. Right before he hit the first note, he pushed one end of the tone dial and it started to record.

They all listened to the intro to Brook's favorite song, the one he played whenever he was happy, or sad. This version seemed like a mix of emotions, as it was missing a lot of instruments and seemed to be lacking in spirit. That was immediately made up for when the entire living crew started singing.

_"Yohohoho, yoho hohooo, yohohoho, yoho ho hooo. Yohohoho, yoho hohooo, yohohoho, yoho ho hooo. Going to deliver Bink's sake. Following the sea breeze..."_

The song continued and the people stuck watching the memories started to smile as all the crew members around them were swaying and laughing. They were enjoying the moment, although the living-dead musician with them did not share in the sentiment and only stiffened his tears as to lighten the mood for the others.

"This is amazing," Robin smiled and watched a few of the members who had their arms under another man's armpits to hold him up since his legs were slashed up badly. "All of this for a nakama left at the cape long before."

The song continued and Usopp, Chopper, Franky, and Luffy joined in, singing with the pirates on all sides of them. Their whole crew made it through the first verse before Brook started a mini piano solo where the other members stopped singing and then the second verse started.

"Look," Zoro said in a quiet voice and Sanji and Nami who were standing next to him looked over as a man fell backwards. His mouth was still open and he was trying to sing, but the words just weren't coming out. The three of them stopped smiling and laughing along with the others and just joined in with Brook's silence.

"Yohohoho, yoho hoho!" Luffy and Chopper swayed one way while the other two crew members who were singing swayed the other. Robin suddenly saw two men in the back drop to their knees and continue to sing before falling forwards on their faces, their mouths moving on the floor for a few more seconds before stopping.

Usopp broke off from Franky who had stopped singing and he continued to shout with Luffy and their doctor. The reason the shipwright had stopped singing was because he noticed the volume of the singing had gone down and he looked around. About a third of the members who had gotten up to sing originally had fallen down dead and his smile disappeared, feeling it was the wrong place for singing as he watched two more men drop.

Chopper was between Luffy and Usopp as they held him up and all three were swinging their legs forwards in front of another group of three pirates. The men were covered in blood, smiling and singing one moment. The next moment they all collapsed and the three singers stopped and stared at the men on the floor who weren't moving an inch, but were smiling wide.

"They, d-died?" Usopp said and turned around to see the rest of their crew already stopped smiling and was looking over towards the few with instruments.

The man playing the violin behind brook suddenly collapsed without warning. He dropped his bow in front of him, but fell on top of his instrument and it cracked underneath him.

_"What's wrong... we're just a quartet,"_ without turning around, past Brook realized that there were only four members of his crew remaining. The man in green wearing glasses dropped his viola and collapsed, his face hitting the deck and his glasses falling off. _"Trio,"_ right as the word came out of Brook's mouth, the third to last man, wearing all pink and playing the cello, dropped to the ground dead.

"Were you the last one?" Nami asked quietly as flashback Brook said they were down to a duet.

"Yes Nami-san," he replied and looked at his face, covered in skin and blood, pieces of himself he could never have back. The last man fell to the ground and left Brook playing the piano alone on his ship. At that moment, the piano playing seemed to get darker as he just kept playing lower chords, tears streaming down both his and his future version's face.

_"Solo."_

Luffy stared at his nakama whose crew had died all around him and he couldn't think of anything worse.

The man tried to keep playing the piano but he only used his right hand, using the other to cover his crying eyes. _"Why, leaving just the accompaniment?"_

They could barely even tell what song was playing anymore as Brook's hand started to miss keys, and then he fell backwards off of the bench. Nami gasped, "You just, you just... died."

The ship covered in dead bodies started to rip apart, the corpses on it becoming nothing more than wisps as there was nothing holding together the memory any longer. Brook was dead, and he couldn't remember anything after that for a while.

"That was, discomforting," Sanji lit himself another cigarette and put it in his mouth to calm his nerves. The chef took a large puff and looked over at the talking skeleton who was trying to hold back his tears.

Brook was only happy for a second that he was able to see his old crew members. For the rest of the time, he was hoping the trap they were in would end and they would be able to leave that place.

_"Mommy!"_ A few of the crew members heard this cry and looked off into the distance where some wisps were coming together. They could see a very small girl with black hair getting held back by others as she reached out.

There was a woman with white hair getting on a boat and she said, _"Goodbye Robin."_

_"Mommy!"_ The small memory twisted and ripped apart, joining the groups of other small bits and pieces of other memories that weren't taking shape around them.

Only Franky, Nami, and Zoro had seen the memory, but as they looked over at their version of Nico Robin, they saw the woman's hair was shadowing her eyes and she looked away from the three of them. "Did she see it?" Franky whispered.

"Baka," Zoro retorted, "she didn't need to see it, it was her memory."

"I think that one is gonna," Chopper started and then his eyes went wide as the blackness around them turned into a field in the dead of night. There were clouds in the night sky, and the wind was blowing across the grass, waving each strand.

The atmosphere around them felt intense and Brook finally shook away the thoughts of his own crew to point and say, "Zoro-san, it's you."

"Huh?" the man said uninterested. He turned around before his eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped. "K-Kuina," he whispered and the skeleton saw that he wasn't looking at himself, but at the girl across the field from him.

"Wait," Usopp looked closer at the two swords, "Those things are real! Are you going to kill her?"

"Ha!" Zoro scoffed at the man, "I didn't have a chance."

Now the crew was really intrigued as they stared at the girl standing near Zoro. The man was grinning as he realized where this was and was excited to see the fight once more.

"How old are you?" Chopper asked as he looked at the children.

"I'm probably around seven or nine, she was two years older than me," the swordsman responded and Chopper sweatdropped as the man had skipped over eight.

Zoro had two swords in his hands while the girl with jet black hair only had one. "That's your sword isn't it?" Luffy asked innocently and then the rest of the crew realized the girl was holding the sword with the white hilt that Zoro always had with him.

Both children were silent, and all of a sudden they charged at each other. Adult Zoro ignored his captain's question and grinned as he watched his younger self manage so slice off some of Kuina's hair in a slash that she barely dodged.

"Damn you!" Sanji jumped towards Zoro and tried to kick him but the man unsheathed one of his swords and blocked the kick. "Trying to hit a girl," the blonde chef growled and Zoro growled right back, pushing extra hard and knocking Sanji off of him.

"Be quiet," he said, "it doesn't matter that she's a girl." The words were out of his mouth before he noticed what he was saying and he shot his gaze back at the flashback as the two of them kept fighting.

The battle seemed evenly matched and went on for a while until Zoro was panting heavily and the girl was still standing strong. She chuckled at the hunched over boy holding two swords and spoke, _"Two swords must be heavy. It seems like you still lack a bit of stamina."_

_"Shut up!"_

Sanji was about to yell at Zoro for using such a harsh tone with a young girl, but the girl surprised him by using Zoro's anger to her advantage and attacking in that moment. She completely had him off guard and knocked both of his swords up in the air before spinning her own around her head.

For a second it looked like she was going to slam it through kid Zoro's face, but the blade embedded itself in the grass inches from his head and she whispered with a smile, _"This is my two thousand and first win."_

"TWO THOUSAND!" The Straw Hat crew shouted in shock.

Luffy turned to his swordsman laughing, "She beat you two thousand times?!"

"Actually, two thousand and one," Robin corrected the captain and smirked at the green haired swordsman. The man just grumbled and looked back at his former self with shame as the boy began grabbing his face and holding back tears.

_"Damn. Shit. I can't accept this..."_

"Whoa!" Franky shouted, "Quite a mouth on you back then."

"Shut up," he growled at the cyborg.

"Don't tell me, you're crying because you lost?" Nami asked incredulously.

"He's crying 'cuz he lost to a girl," Usopp corrected and the man turned his head towards the sniper who turned and ran twenty feet away before looking back at the memory.

"Sore loser at heart," Sanji sighed and shrugged his shoulders, "there's nothing worse..." he was interrupted by the girl in the flashback and looked up to watch.

_"I'm the one who wants to cry because I can't accept it."_

Most of the crew and past Zoro all seemed surprised by this statement, but the girl continued, shocking them even more.

_"Girls, when we grow up we become weaker than men. I'll probably be overtaken by you soon. You always said you'd become the best swordsman in the world. My father told me that, it's not possible for a woman. I know, I already know this, but I can't accept it! Zoro, it must be nice to be a man. I also want to become the world's greatest swordsman. My chest is starting to grow out..."_

The girl said this out of nowhere and reached up, grabbing one of her developing breasts. Past Zoro started to blush in the awkward situation and Sanji was fuming, wondering why he didn't have any girls like that in his childhood.

"That's such a horrible thing for a father to say to his daughter," Nami muttered.

_"If I, if I was born a boy..."_

_ "After beating me, how can you say such weak words?! That's despicable! You've been my goal this whole time!"_

The girl moved her arm from in front of her face to look at the angry boy yelling at her. This time Sanji said nothing as Zoro yelled at her and just watched with interest, occasionally looking over to see what their Zoro was doing, but he just seemed to be intently watching himself. Her eyes were filled with water and were glistening in the moonlight, but kid Zoro wasn't going to accept this.

_"Is that what you're going to say when I beat you one day?! As if it wasn't because of my skills. It makes me, who's been training hard, look like a fool. Don't say things like that!"_

He seemed to succeed at stopping the girl from crying and he closed the distance between the two of them.

_"Promise me! One day either you or I will become the greatest swordsman in the world! We will compete to see who does it!"_

The girl looked down at Zoro's outstretched hand for a few seconds before smirking, _"Baka, saying that even though you're weak."_ She grabbed his hand and at the same time they shouted, _"It's a promise!"_

Around them, the field started to break apart and everyone looked around confused.

Usopp finally said what they were thinking, "Wait, that's your painful memory?" he asked the swordsman who turned and smirked.

"Did you expect anything else from a monster like him?" Nami sighed and looked around, trying to formulate a way to get out of there.

As everyone else started looking around for other memories or ways out, Robin looked over at Zoro who had waited until the eyes were all off of him to look back at the wisps floating away from his memory. She noticed a look in his eye and didn't want to pry, but she felt that memory held more weight than any of them understood.

"Look, it's Zoro again," Chopper pointed behind the swordsman and he turned to see a young version of himself. This time he was angered that the girl who had them trapped here was making the others see his memories.

The memory didn't surround them, but it was big enough that they could look through the haze and see that it was raining around the boy as he walked. They could hear voices on either side of the boy as he walked straight ahead, surrounded by taller figures. He was walking directly behind a coffin and they seemed to be in a funeral proceeding towards the graveyard. Two men next to him were talking in hushed voices.

_"She missed her footing on the stairs in the storage room."_

_ "Storage room?"_

_ "It seems that she went in there to find her katana's whetstone."_

_ "Why look for such a thing?"_

_ "Who knows."_

_ "She was just a kid."_

The crew members who hadn't already guessed realized who the two men were talking about and gasped. Zoro didn't look a day older than in the memory they had just seen, but Kuina was dead, her dreams crushed.

_So that's why,_ Robin understood now why the previous memory meant so much to him as the funeral march continued. _That promise, he's the only one who can keep it now._

Franky looked at the young boy walking as the memory started to tear and he couldn't tell whether or not he was shedding any tears. _No, those are definitely rain drops, _the cyborg was amazed that Zoro could hold it all in like that.

Small memories started exploding out from the wisps of the funeral march in front of them. One had Zoro beating a pole with his two swords as hard as he could before that memory vanished. Another had the kid attacking a fellow student, an adult, ruthlessly until the man fell, unable to continue. The look in his eyes was of raw fury and pain.

"What is this?" Zoro growled up at the sky. He started shouting, "You hear me?! Stop just showing me!" There was no response from the girl who had them trapped in their own memories.

A new wisp dragged out from the coffin that was in the larger memory originally. This wisp seemed bigger than the others and the crew saw Zoro holding up a boulder by a rope with his teeth. Some of the members needed to rub their eyes as they could have sworn they saw Kuina sitting behind him.

The boy in the memory seemed to have imagined her there, because he spun around, dropping the rock into the stream he was standing over. When the girl vanished, the young version of Zoro looked up at the sky and screamed as loud as he could. Everyone was surprised as he had been holding up until that moment when they all understood just how much pain he was in.

Finally that wisp broke apart and all the other wisps were torn up too.

"Well," the swordsman said in a low voice, not looking at any of the crew members. With everyone else, someone had something to say about their memories, but with someone like Zoro, they just couldn't think of anything to say. "Good," he said and turned to pretend to look for a new memory.

_Kuina, I have not forgotten. _The man's fists clenched, _I will be the best._

**A/N Alright everyone, here's the first chapter of a story I've already finished. There'll be seven or eight more added to it and I hope you enjoyed. Leave a review telling me what you think!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2:**

"Hey! Are you gonna let us out of here anytime soon!?" Usopp shouted at the black sky. There were some unfavorable memories happening on either side of him, with a few crew members watching each one, but neither was taking up a lot of space and ripped themselves to shreds before becoming full blown ones like some of the others.

"No," for the first time since they were dropped through the ground, they heard a response from the little girl who sent them there. Her voice sounded so cute, and as they thought about the three foot tall girl with short pink hair, she didn't seem like a menace. "I'm going to wait until you go mad, then I'll release you into the world."

"Believe me," Zoro growled and looked up where he heard the voice coming from. The evil glare he gave the sky received a high pitched shriek as the girl saw his terrifying face and panicked, "I'm already mad."

"I mean _mad_ as in crazy, not angry you baka! Bakaaa!" This only made the swordsman more furious but the girl wasn't finished, "Once you start fighting amongst yourselves, that's when the real fun will begin."

"Why would we fight between us?" Luffy asked and just heard fading laughter as a response before the girl was gone again. "Hello?"

"I think she's gone Luffy-san," Brook offered and the rubber captain stopped looking up.

"Oi," they all looked over to Luffy and the captain continued, "let's go."

"Alright."

"Let's do it!"

"SUPER idea!"

"I'll give it a try," Robin crossed her arms as the others started preparing to escape.

Nami, Brook, Chopper, and Usopp all stared with open mouths as the other five got ready. They ducked for cover as the group started.

Zoro removed his swords and started sending flying blade attacks up in the air, trying to blast a hole in the roof.

"Sanji," Luffy called out.

"Gotcha," the chef understood and grabbed the captain by the shirt collar before moon-stepping over and over in the air.

Franky was shooting missiles and finally his laser-beam into the same area as Zoro's attacks, but they seemed to be doing almost nothing except break through some wisps right above their heads.

Robin shouted, "Cien Fleur," and grew two wings out of her back made of arms. She flew herself high up, having trained hard in the last two years, she was able to hold onto her ability without a time limit now and she caught up to Luffy and Sanji who was jumping on air.

"How high does this go?" Luffy asked impatiently.

"We fell for a long time at first," Sanji reminded him and they kept going. As they got farther and farther, it seemed like they might actually be close to the top.

"I can feel it," Luffy shouted and the other two smiled as they were almost home free.

Suddenly three different images appeared in front of the pirates. One was an old man with funky hair, blood spurting out of his back and his chest. The second was a little blonde boy with blue clothes and a top hat. The final image showed what looked like a woman, but had a huge head and hairy legs.

"Professor!" Robin's wings disappeared and she fell, unable to tear her eyes from the old man getting shot in the chest.

"Elizabeth!" Sanji screamed in disgust and tripped in the air, plummeting down below after Robin.

"Go back up, I want to see Sabo!" Luffy reached towards the memory but his hand swiped right through it and it tore apart. He accidentally swiped into Robin's memory and destroyed it which made the woman falling shout angrily at her captain, "Sorry," he apologized to the woman before all three of them hit the weird black ground.

Sanji shivered and took a long puff of his cigarette before taking it out and flicking it to the ground. _I had hoped never to see her... him, again, _the blonde haired man closed his eyes and tried to think of anything else.

Luffy seemed disappointed that he didn't get to see more of Sabo, but Robin was the most upset of the three. The people down below were too far to see the memories, but they got the gist of what happened by their fellow members' reactions.

"Robin, are you alright?" Nami bent down to her friend and extended an arm but she shrugged her shoulder and knocked the younger girl's hand away.

_Clover, _the woman looked down at the ground as she had yet to get up off her knees after falling. _The World Government is worse than you imagined. I wish you were alive to learn the things Dragon has taught me_.

"Why'd you fall?" Luffy asked the chef angrily who spun with a flustered look on his face.

"Did you see that monster?" Sanji asked.

"What monster?!" Chopper shouted, looking at the arguing crew members.

The captain looked back up at the sky but Sabo was no longer there. He shot his chef a pouting look and the man just turned away, not wanting to deal with Luffy's selfish attitude.

"Oi, look ahead morons," Zoro scowled and watched as a memory started to surround them. They were high above the water, but they were surrounded on all sides. The ground beneath them turned brown and bumpy and the crew looked around, figuring that they were standing on a rock.

"Whose memory is this?" Franky asked, looking around and not seeing anyone.

Nami suddenly gasped and a few others looked in the direction the woman was. The girl with orange hair was looking down to the left, off the side of the rock face they were standing on.

"Ohh," Sanji said as he looked off the side. A pained look came over his face and he turned and walked away from the side as the other crew members walked over.

"Yow!" Franky shouted as he looked at the little boy climbing up the rock.

The kid looked young, no older than ten. His blonde hair was a mess and covered part of his face as he dug his hands into the rock and tried pulling himself up one hand at a time. The horrifying aspect of the kid however, he was only skin and bones. His skin looked loose like there was more meat on his bones at some point, but now he was beyond malnourishment.

"Sanji-San?" Brook asked, looking down at the kid climbing the rock. The boy reminded him of his skeleton self, his body so thin and brittle that he looked ready to break.

He didn't seem to care about how he looked, or anything else except for climbing up that rock. The boy got to the top and the crew watching parted ways as he poked his head over. His eyes widened and they followed his gaze to the other side of the rock.

For the first time, they noticed that their adult version of Sanji had already walked across the rock and was standing next to the man who was sitting over there. "Is that Zeff?" Nami asked and Luffy pointed and yelled.

"That's the old man who made me work at the restaurant!" The others saw the man sitting next to a large bag tied at the top.

"Is that... food?" Chopper asked softly, looking over at the bag in horror. He looked back at the boy who was literally dying of starvation next to him and he became huge. His sudden transformation surprised Franky and Usopp who fell down next to him. "HOW DARE HE?!" The large reindeer roared.

_"There's still so much left."_

The crew stared down at the little boy and were stunned as he pulled out a cooking knife and held it in his right hand.

"He's going to kill the man and take his food," Robin observed.

"No," Usopp shook his head, "this can't be right. We met them together; he was like a father to Sanji."

_"No matter what, I have to get my hands on it."_

Again the crew was shocked as Sanji looked more like a animal than a person. The crazed smile on his face grew as he put both hands on the handle of the knife.

"Can't really blame him here," Nami said as she looked at the child.

"Sanji," Usopp whispered. It was hard to see the chef in such a state. None of them had ever seen such an expression on his face before, and they never wanted to see it again.

_"It's his entire fault to begin with. I want to live on!" _The boy kept smiling wickedly as he started scampering around the rock face.

Chopper turned back to his normal-sized self and watched as Sanji crept behind a rock, and then ran to hide behind another that was right behind the old man sitting on the edge.

They looked over at the adult Sanji who cast a glance over his shoulder and watched his crazed face pop over the rock.

The kid made a break for it and started sprinting at the man. Unfortunately, because of his weak condition, he wasn't fast and slowed down, panting hard.

_"Why are you here little eggplant?"_

The old man spoke in a raspy voice and the crew stared at his back in confusion. The members who knew him didn't want to believe what they were witnessing, and the man's tone suggested he wasn't a heartless monster.

Kid Sanji stopped and stared at the old man's back.

_"Perhaps you saw a ship?" _The man asked, not turning to look at the boy behind him whose smile turned into an angry scowl.

_"I came to take your food."_

"Smart," Franky said sarcastically. "Tell the man you're about to kill that you've come to get him. Not the best plan," the cyborg stopped talking as the boy seemed like he was going to follow through with his threat. Child version of Sanji rose the knife in his hands.

_"If you're gonna kill me, go ahead and try. Without anything to eat, I'd die anyway!" _the kid froze and turned tail and ran from the man, instead he sprinted to the huge bag next to him.

With a slash of his knife he cut the bag open and everyone except for the adult version of Sanji gasped.

Nami's eyes turned to Beli signs and they glowed gold as she stared at the real gold on the floor in front of her.

"There wasn't any food?" Chopper asked and he looked over at the front of the man for the first time. The reindeer's eyes popped and his jaw dropped, unable to say a word and taking back all the horrible things he thought about the man in his mind.

_"I thought we were not to contact each other until one of us saw a ship."_

_"What's this? It's all mere treasure."_

Nami didn't even get angry at the child's sentiment towards one of her favorite things. The woman was staring at the boy with sad eyes as Sanji stared at the gold confused out of his mind.

The adult Sanji was standing on the side of the rock island. He stared out over the ocean and put his cigarette between his fingers as he spoke. "The old man pretended to have a whole lot of food, but the only thing he was able to salvage was one piece of bread. Which he gave to me," the man put the light back in his mouth. "We were shipwrecked here for three months."

"THREE MONTHS!" Luffy shouted. He tried to imagine what it would be like going without food for a week but it made his stomach hurt.

Zoro looked over at him and remembered back to when Helmeppo forced him to be tied up to a post for almost a month. He went without food for weeks, but even he didn't think he would have managed another few weeks there, let alone a couple months more. He didn't look at the chef, but he made a note of it in his mind, gaining a small shred of respect for the man.

_"Having money but nothing to eat. Funny story don't you think?"_

"So that's why," Chopper mumbled incoherently as he continued to stare at the old man sitting on the edge.

The child version of Sanji looked so wrinkly and old, despite his size. He looked up at the man in front of him, still not understanding what had happened, _"Hey. This sack's just full of treasure."_ They thought that maybe little Sanji understood what had happened, but the kid had lost the one hope he had. _"What's going on here? What about all the food?"_ He ran over to the man and started shaking his shoulder with his feeble arms. _"Didn't you eat anything up until now? Hey, say something!"_

Past Sanji walked in front of the old man and the majority of the crew looked to see what he was so shocked about. Nami put both of her hands up to her mouth as Luffy, Franky, and Usopp's eyes went huge, blood pouring to their foreheads.

Zeff's body looked even worse off than Sanji's. His skin had nothing between it and the bones and they could see the outline of his skeletal structure through his almost transparent, pale skin. He was missing a leg and the ground around him was soaked with blood, only a tight rope under his knee keeping the wound from bleeding out.

_"What happened to that leg of yours?"_ The boy's eyes went wide as he thought back and remembered watching the man cut his own leg off. _"Wasn't that just a dream? To have you saving me. That food you handed me, was that all of it?"_

_"Precisely."_

Young Sanji had started to tear up and a few of the Straw Hat's crew members were tearing as well. Franky was bawling and shouting how the pirate was a true man.

_"Without that leg, you can no longer be a pirate, can you?"_

_ "Guess you're right."_

_ "Why? You didn't have to. I don't remember asking you to treat me so kindly! Why? WHY?"_

_ "You... you have the same dream as I do."_

_ "All Blue?" _the boy asked, getting to his feet in surprise. _"But even your crew said that such a thing doesn't exist."_

_ "But it does. When the time comes, set off for the Grand Line. All Blue is definitely there! I certainly can't be a pirate anymore. So this time you go there and find it!"_ The man started to fall back and the rock they were standing on started to tear apart.

"Wait, this isn't the end," Sanji said turning away from the water. He was waiting for the ship to appear, he'd remembered it had many beautiful women on board who he never fully appreciated as a kid.

"Looks like it's all we get to see," Brook said as the waves in the water below them started to splash harder and fade into the sky. The background sky was ripping apart as well and the crew tried to watch as Sanji talked to the old man.

"But this is right when we get rescued, look!" he pointed out into the distance and they could all see a small dot on the horizon.

The group smiled before watching the dot vanish like most of the rest of the vision. They looked around and watched the pieces of the memory scatter into the blackness around them.

"This is sick," Nami stated, her whole body shaking. "I don't want to be here anymore."

Although the previous memory wasn't too heartbreaking, many of them had things they'd rather leave unseen. "Let us out!" Usopp shouted at the sky and Chopper joined in with him but they received no reply from their torturer.

"We'll just have to act crazy and then she'll let us out," Zoro suggested, unsheathing his sword a bit and glaring over at Chopper and Usopp with a wicked smile on his face.

They freaked out at the swordsman's suggestion and screamed in panic. Now they were frantically shouting that the little girl let them leave before Zoro killed them, but Luffy was just rolling on the floor laughing like a buffoon.

"That was a good one Zoro," the swordsman looked over at the captain with a look that showed he wasn't joking but he still slid his sword back into its sheath.

At the same time, two wisps that were floating around them started to appear and the crew looked back and forth as the images grew and then pressed into each other. The memories pushed back and forth until the edges just seemed to merge and the crew was confused at where they were.

On one side of them, they were in the middle of an arctic tundra, snow all over the place and freezing wind blowing past, picking up the snow as it did. Even though they couldn't really feel the cold air, some of them still shivered subconsciously and crossed their arms per instinct.

The other side was much darker and it was night on an island. There was grass all over the cliff they were looking at, and over the cliff there was water spreading out for miles. But the thing that stood out the most, was the tombstone sitting on the edge of the cliff, with the little girl with orange hair sitting in front of it.

Nami saw the image and looked away, she didn't want to watch this.

They couldn't tell how old Nami was because her face was pressed against the grass, muffled sobs coming from her. She was small though, a child around the same age as Sanji in the last image.

The orange-haired woman looked the other way so that she wouldn't have to see herself but that direction wasn't much better.

Robin turned away from the frozen landscape to watch the other woman's memory, as she couldn't handle looking at herself in that state. The little girl with black hair in the memory was treading slowly through the snow in nothing but a sleeveless dress that barely went below her waist.

Her cheeks were red, starting to turn purple, and she was shivering as snow clung to her freezing body. "Robin-chan," Sanji said and then turned to look at the image behind him, "Nami..."

_"Bellemere!" _

The girl with orange hair shot her head up in the air and wailed the name before Robin's memory started to overtake hers and the outsides started closing in. Suddenly the entire crew found themselves surrounded by snow, and Robin was just walking slowly through the frozen desert.

Snow fell all around the girl and she continued to walk, all alone. She tripped and called out in pain, but no one was around for miles and she just lay there for a few seconds. The crew didn't know what to make of the scene playing out in front of them.

Even Zoro had his mouth lowered a little, he didn't understand what he was looking at. For some reason they all felt so sad looking at the girl, all by herself in the snow. It was her face that really broke them though, the lifeless, scared eyes worrying her nakama.

"Why are you only wearing that dress!?" Chopper shouted, "It's got to be way below freezing!" He looked at the adult version and stopped yelling at the woman whose eyes were frozen on her younger form in sadness.

The girl clenched her open hands and curled up some snow, pushing herself back to her feet and continuing to walk and the snow falling around them started to pick up. They were confused as to what was happening, but the snow started to pull in different directions, leaving black spaces between the air until the scene itself was actually tearing apart.

As the memory was ripping, just like Zoro's before, smaller fragments started pulling out of the larger one and scattering around the sky, large enough for the crew to see.

_"Look at this bounty, if we trade her in, we'll be rich!"_ A few men were pointing at a poster but Robin was running away from them

_ "All you bring is death! The World Government came after us because of you!"_ A man wearing a pirate's hat and had scratches and bruises all over his face yelled. _"If you're going to stay on my ship you'll need to earn your stay."_ The look in the man's eyes disgusted many of the crew members and Robin turned away, grabbing her left arm and squeezing it hard as she looked down at the ground and tried to drown out the noise.

A new image appeared with the little girl sitting down and smiling next to a small dog. She was laughing but her eyes were filled with tears and as the dog ran away she kept laughing. Even as the picture faded away from in front of them, the laughter that was echoing in the dark room made some of them feel unnerved and looked over at the strong woman who had yet to say a word.

_"Monster!"_ the group heard a voice shout and turned around to see a different memory forming. It was small and shaky, looking like it was going to be torn at any second but Tony Tony Chopper gasped as he saw himself.

_"MONSTER!"_

_ "Shoot it!"_

Past Chopper was running for his life through a forest covered in snow. The townspeople were chasing him and shooting and finally they hit, blood spurting from Chopper's back and the reindeer collapsing to the ground.

"Stop this," Chopper whimpered as the memory above him faded. "I don't want to watch this anymore, please!" he shouted up at the sky but there was no response.

_"ACE!"_ the crew all turned to where they heard Luffy's voice and all they saw was purple. The purple started to become more translucent and they could see Luffy with little purple dots all over his skin.

Chopper and Robin were still on the ground, not looking up, but the other crew members all saw a man who looked like a huge vampire staring at their captain.

_"I will save Ace!"_ Luffy in the vision shouted and jumped for the man.

_"HYDRA!"_ the man shouted in response and a giant purple dragon came out of his body, engulfing Luffy and causing him to drop down to the ground, writhing in pain.

"That's the power of the Doku Doku fruit," Brook said with a gasp. "The captain of the men who attacked our ship had that ability. I guess it makes sense that fifty years later someone else would have it, but that man uses it so much better than the one who attacked us decades ago."

"That's the Warden of Impel Down," Robin muttered as she got to her feet and stared at the figure. "Magellen."

Even that memory started to fade fast as it couldn't hold on for much longer. "This is getting ridiculous," Sanji muttered, trying to ignore the fact that the one who had them trapped here was a cute girl. "Oi, let us out of here!" he called up at the black sky covered in fast moving wisps of memories.

"This is all your fault," Chopper whispered, still remembering how it felt getting chased by everyone on the island. His family didn't want him, the humans didn't want him, "Why did you have to challenge that stupid girl?!" the reindeer shouted at Nami who looked back at him surprised. He had tears coming down his eyes, _Am I going to have to watch Doctor die again?_ The reindeer was scared and looked away from the navigator who started yelling at him that it wasn't her fault.

"He's right you know," Zoro said even though he didn't care to place blame and wouldn't hold it against her. "You can't let children get to you like that."

"Don't talk to Nami-san like that Moss Head," Sanji growled and lifted a foot to kick him. "What about you, getting all sad because you lost a duel to a girl?" Zoro pulled out a sword and angrily scowled at the chef before they started swinging and kicking each other.

"Guys," Usopp called out, trying to calm everyone down. "GUYS!" he screamed in a loud, authoritative voice. No one expected him to sound like that and everyone except for Robin turned to him and stared as he continued, "This is exactly what she wants us to do."

The other members remembered what the girl said about fighting amongst themselves and calmed down. "Look," Nami said, changing the subject and pointing at a wisp of a memory above them that started engulfing the other wisps around it and growing stronger.

_"I don't remember what happened. I just ate three rumble balls and then nothing."_

The crew looked over at Chopper again and the little reindeer was looking around as the scene started to form around them. They were surrounded by stone walls and many of them recognized it as the interior of the castle on top of Drum Mountain. The one hundred and thirty-nine year old woman sitting at his bedside lowered her glasses and looked down at the bed.

Chopper was lying there, looking much younger than he was now. He had bandages on his face and looked like a mess.

_"Let's call it a rampage of your Devil Fruit."_ The woman pulled away her glasses and looked the reindeer in the eyes. _"I don't care what happens, you can't let yourself go down that path. A power that destroys your foes, but turns you against your friends and your own body as well."_

"She's talking about your Monster Point right?" Usopp asked. The little creature nodded and stared up at the vision as it started to get shaky, looking like it would tear apart at any second.

"It was the first time," the reindeer explained. "I was experimenting with Rumble Balls, and I wound up destroying a village," he paused and sniffled back some tears, "I hurt a lot of people."

_"There's only one word for a creature like that,"_

The entire memory started crumbling, the walls of the castle collapsing as the vision split and shredded itself.

_"A MONSTER!"_ Doctorine's voice bounced around the room as Luffy's crew watched. They looked over to the little reindeer with sad eyes.

"It was good to see Doctorine again wasn't it?" Nami asked the little doctor.

"I wish it was, but she called, she called me a," the young doctor didn't finish his sentence and just looked down at his feet, ashamed of himself for his actions that day. _When I see her again, I can show Doctorine the control I have over it now._ He resolved to do just that and he calmed himself down a little.

"When are we going to get out of here?" Zoro grumbled, tired of everyone's sobbing and whimpering about their pasts.

"I don't see you coming up with any bright ideas," Nami scolded him.

"Whoa," Franky shouted and pointed as a strong wisp of memory was growing fast. Finally the memories all pulled together and merged, surrounding the group standing there and watching.

_"Dogra! You went looking for Ace and Dadan right? They've both come home,"_ the little boy in the straw hat called over to the short bandit in front of him.

"Dogra," Luffy said with a smile, looking at the mountain bandit.

"Why were you with bandits?" Sanji asked.

"I lived with them for ten years," the boy responded plainly and everyone's eyes went wide.

"Wow," Franky shouted, "so that guy's kind of like family?" Luffy thought about it for a second and then nodded with a toothy grin.

_"Really, they have? That's great..."_

"He sure doesn't sound too happy about it," Zoro commented looking at the man.

"That's because something just happened," Luffy said, his smile fading away. They followed Dogra and the child version of Luffy as they walked into the building next to them. They were in the middle of the forest and it looked like the house was meant to be well hidden.

They went inside and everyone turned to the short bandit, welcoming him back and laughing about how Dadan and Ace were safe.

In a quiet whisper, the man spoke, _"Sabo died."_

The room became instantly silent as everyone gasped.

The crew saw the young version of Ace and he looked furious, _"You liar! Don't even joke about that!"_ The boy tackled the man from across the room and raised a fist over his face, his eyes filled with rage.

_"Don't do it Ace."_ A large man behind him pleaded.

_"It's not a lie, nor a joke."_ The man underneath Ace shouted for the room to hear him.

Sanji and Robin looked over to their captain, remembering the image of the boy in blue with the hat. "That was Sabo?" Sanji asked, realizing why Luffy wanted to see him so badly. The captain nodded, and then he told them that Sabo was his and Ace's other brother.

_"It was so sudden, I barely realized what had happened. I doubted my own eyes! I wondered if it was just a dream or an illusion!_

_"Shut up! Sabo went back to his noble born parents!"_ Ace shouted from on top of the man. _"There's no way he'd sail out to sea!"_

_"That's right, Sabo went home!"_ Flashback Luffy shouted.

"Wait, he was the son of a noble?" Sanji asked, his idea of all nobles being selfish, disgusting picks.

"Yeah, but he wasn't like them," Luffy defended his lost brother. "He didn't like the nobles and ran away to come live with us in the woods. He was good."

Robin was standing next to Luffy with a confused look on her face until she realized something that had never occurred to her before.

The man on the floor grabbed Ace's arms and shouted back in his face, _"Outlaws like us understand how he must have felt. We all have places we really don't want to go back to!"_ He pushed a shocked Ace off of him. _"Do you really think he'd go to sea, if he was actually happy? Do you really think he'd fly a pirate flag and set out on his own?!"_

Memory Ace and Luffy stood there shocked until Luffy started wailing about how Sabo wasn't happy. Tears streamed down Luffy's face as Ace yelled at himself for not saving him.

_"Where is the person who killed Sabo?! I'm gonna murder him!"_

"Whoa!" Franky backed away a step after seeing the look of unadulterated hatred in Ace's eyes.

_"The Celestial Dragon? There's no way you can do that!"_

"A Celestial Dragon!" Nami shouted in surprise.

"You mean those bastards on the Saobody archipelago?" Zoro remembered almost cutting one to pieces when he got in his way. A thought occurred to him that maybe Luffy punching that bastard in the face was more than just for Hachi and Camie, but for his dead brother as well.

Dadan jumped up from the ground and grabbed the back of Ace's head as he ran for the door. She slammed him into the ground and the wooden floor broke, as well as causing Ace's forehead to start bleeding profusely from a wound he had bandaged.

"What happened to them?" Chopper noticed all the wounds covering their bodies and Luffy said they were caught in a fire and ended it at that.

_"Drop it you damn brat!"_ the woman with long orange hair shouted.

Ace retorted by pushing her off of him, _"Get off me, Don't get in my way!"_

_ "You keep acting tough, even though you don't have any real strength! What the hell do you think you can do now?! You'll just end up dead! You'll die, and everyone will forget you by tomorrow! That's all you amount to right now. It wasn't this kingdom that killed Sabo, it was the world itself! What can you do?_

The woman shook the boy's body over and over again while she yelled in his face, _"Your father's death brought about a new era! Once you become a man of his caliber, then you're free to live or die as you want!"_ The memory started to rip up but they could all still see the young version of Luffy as he looked up and screamed his brother's name through tears.

The rest of the room started to break apart, much more violently than the previous times. The walls started to rupture and explode outwards, as if the memory version of the house was exploding and it made some of them think that it was part of the flashback. The floor started to rip apart next, and then the people. Watching the shards of the people in front of them swirl around was too much for some and the weaker members covered their eyes.

"Luffy," Robin said in a way too calm voice for the situation they were in. The captain was able to turn around and look at the older woman who smiled at him. "Sabo is alive."

"WHAT?!" Everyone except for Luffy and Robin shouted.

Luffy didn't respond to the woman, he looked into her eyes as deep as he could. Suddenly his own eyes widened and he asked in a croaking voice, "R-really?"

"Yes," the woman smiled at her captain and was glad that she knew about this now. She couldn't bear to see him saddened by something that she knew wasn't true, so she had to tell him, even if it went against what she'd promised Luffy's father. "I spent much of the last two years with him. He's very strong."

The rubber captain couldn't believe his ears. Many of the crew members were also stunned. The memory stopped breaking apart in a rough way and just fizzled out.

"You mean, you've thought he was dead ever since then?" Chopper asked.

"Luffy-san, this is amazing!" Brook shouted and the captain seemed to agree as he had begun to cry. The tears were streaming down Luffy's face as he sobbed, too happy for words to describe.

"S-Sabo!" the captain shouted.

"Quiet!" a loud voice shouted from high above them. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look around for the source of the voice, trying to find out where the little girl was hiding.

"You aren't supposed to be getting happy from this! These are supposed to make you break down and cry... In a sad way!" she added at the end as Luffy _was_ crying. "Time to step it up a notch," she called out and the crew felt an uneasy sense of dread growing in their stomachs.

"Wait, how was this not the worst?" Usopp asked, fearing what memories could be hidden if there were sadder moments than the ones they'd been watching.

"Oh," the girl giggled in the sky. "I can _feel_ much, much stronger memories hiding in you people. It was actually pretty difficult getting them to rise to the surface, but I'm good, I'm really good. Hehehehe!" she laughed and her voice faded on all sides, no one able to ascertain to where she was hiding.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Nami whispered as she looked up in the air around them.

All at once, the area around them started bursting with huge chunks of memories. There was one showing Zoro's childlike face, tears pouring down it. The kid hadn't shed a tear before when they watched his reactions at Kuina's funeral, and after, but in the small image they could see of him, he was crying his eyes out.

On another image, the young version of Nami was bent over a woman with maroon colored hair. Her chest was covered in blood and there were two little girls screaming at her not to die. One of them had purple hair and the ones who had visited her village recognized Nojiko.

A blurry image started to get more solid and everyone looked away from the other two to look at the new one. Their eyes went wide as they saw a small girl wearing a purple dress without any sleeves. She was standing on top of a rock and staring in front of her as fires raged across the entire island she was on. The huge tree in the center of the island was nothing but a pillar of flames, only recognizable by its shape.

Robin grabbed her head and closed her eyes, trying to shake the memory away.

There was another image that was larger than the others and started to push the others out of the way as it got bigger and surrounded the crew. They were all looking around and realized that Water 7 was behind them, they were back again and all went looking for Franky.

The boy was wearing the same clothes he had on the day the sea train hit him, so they figured it was the same day. There was screaming in the distance and fires on the water, but the teenage boy started yelling two names and running down the steps from Water 7.

The crew had no choice but to watch as Franky ran across the scrapyard of ships on his way to the shore where two figures were lying. _"Iceberg! Tom-San!"_

"We get to see Tom?" Usopp asked, feeling a small bit of excitement but at the same time dread, knowing what was about to come.

The cyborg didn't answer and they looked over at the large figure who they assumed was Tom since they recognized the younger version of Iceberg.

_"Oi, both of you! What's going on?! What happened?!"_

Iceberg started to stand, he looked in his young twenties and he glared at the younger man in front of him.

_"Are you okay? Hey, Ice-"_ the older man slugged the teenager across the face and sent him flying into a crate, breaking it into pieces.

"What was that for?" Luffy shouted.

"I deserved it," Franky stated and everyone just stayed quiet and watched as the two people in the flashback argued.

_"You idiot!"_ Iceberg fell to his knees and looked down, _"Those government agents who came by, they used your battleships!"_

_ "He was hit by my own ship?"_ Franky looked over at the fishman who had a huge spear sticking out of his green chest. There was blood pouring from the wound and it looked bad.

_"I told you, over and over..."_

_ "Tom-san was hit, by my own ship!"_ Franky's face twisted and everyone could see how much pain he was feeling at that moment. It was heart-wrenching just watching it but no one could turn away.

_"Listen,"_ Iceberg put his hands on Franky's shoulders, _"It is our trade to create weapons. Even if it isn't your intention, weapons will always be used to hurt others! Even the people you care about! We've been had by the government. We'll be blamed for the attack on the judicial ship. Those guys want the blueprints."_

"What attack, what judicial ship?" Luffy asked, unable to hold his curiosity back.

"It came to clear the charges against Tom for having built the Pirate King's ship." Franky explained as he watched his former self try to cry, but not be able to because he felt it was all his fault. "Because he created the sea-train, he was going to be acquitted of the charges... but," his face turned furious as he continued, "the government wanted the Pluton blueprints. They used my ships to blow up the judicial one and blamed it on us."

_"They need to incriminate Tom-san so that they can investigate him as they please!"_ Iceberg shouted at him, _"Can you really say it's not your fault?! If Tom-san gets taken away because of this, I'll never forgive you, Franky!"_ Both men started crying, one in anger and the other in frustration.

The screams Franky shouted started to die out as the memory faded and the crew looked over at their robot shipwright. The scene around them was still tearing, but he was standing perfectly still, until his whole form began to shake violently.

"Franky it's not," Chopper started but the cyborg looked down angrily at the doctor, making him stop in his tracks.

"Iceberg told me," he started, "he told me over and over," his face looked pained as he clenched his metal fists. "That I had to take responsibility for my battleships," he slammed his fists down onto the black ground as it replaced the scrapyard. "Don't tell me it's not my fault, because I got Tom-san taken away. If it weren't for me, he would have been cleared of his charges," the man scowled and looked away from his crew.

Franky started walking away from them and when he got about fifty feet away, he stopped moving. Luffy took a step towards him but Zoro put an arm on his captain's shoulder, "He needs to be alone right now." The swordsman warned and Luffy looked over at his shipwright, unable to think of anything to say if he went to talk to him anyway.

The captain's excitement over his brother being alive was crushed by the sadness of the prior memory and everyone was in a bad mood again.

"Good," a voice cackled from up above them as the girl saw all the frowns and scowls on their faces. "Now time to have some _real_ fun. Tehehehe!"

**A/N I'm amazed by all the positive feedback I got for this story so I got up this next chapter quickly. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and I hope you all enjoyed the latest chapter.**

Guest

I love it! It's very good and I want th next chapter! ;) excuse me for my English but I'm french

**Always great to hear my works are reaching different countries! Thanks for reading.**

RedZoro

That id a great chapter you wrote , more I like Zoro so I love this chapter and I wish read all the others.

(sorry for the bad english,I am french ...)

**I got what you were trying to say and thank you, again love to hear the French are enjoying my story haha XD!**

Usagi

Great story :) i love straw hats watching sad memorys... i nearly cried when lysops mom died

***Sniffles* Yep, that part was a tough one. Hope you liked the newest memories, or disliked them considering how sad some were ;(. Thanks for reading and reviewing!**

DangoCorn

Amgg this is interesting 8D! GOOD JOB!

**Thank YOU!**

mar9893

please update soon!

**Here you go.**

Black Night Wolf

This is a great start and I hope you update soon ;).

**Thank you and two in twenty four hours is pretty soon right ;P**

tarliteOracle

like

**Nice. Again thanks for all the reviews, follows, and favs. See you soon.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3:**

"I want to get out of here" Nami whispered to everyone as they stood in the dark. Her nakama were all staring around at wisps of memories, wincing as they saw the fragments or heard the screams inside them.

Sanji turned to her and consoled, "Don't worry Nami-swan. We'll get out of here for sure," he smiled at the orange haired woman but she was looking right past him and her eyes were huge. The chef followed where her brown eyes were looking and he turned around to see many wisps combining around a single point.

_"Doctor!"_ the other crew members who hadn't seen the larger memory forming turned their heads and stared at the image. It got larger and started surrounding them, focused on one point, a small girl with orange hair.

_"You can't go home!"_

"I recognize that guy," Luffy pointed at the one holding back the two little girls. "He was one of those guys who tried to fight Arlong, right Nami? Nami?" the captain in the red shirt looked over to his navigator but she had her hands over her mouth and was starting to cry.

"Nami-san," Sanji whispered and put a hand on her shoulder. Instead of shrugging him off like usual, she grabbed it with one of her hands and ducked her head down to her shoulder.

_"Get out of the way! We have to rescue Bellemere-san!"_

The little girl with the orange hair looked around nine years old, maybe younger in the image before them, and it made the crew members furious. "Arlong," Luffy seethed, seeing that the fishman was still able to make his navigator cry.

_"Nojiko Nami!"_ the old man shouted at the two girls. He lifted up his sunglasses so he could look them in the eyes, _"You two listen up. It's times like these, well, because of a situation like this, I'm forced to tell you something that might sound a little cruel."_

_ "Doctor?"_

Behind them, the crew heard a bloodcurdling scream that made present Nami drop down to her knees. The past version of her screamed out the woman's name again but the old doctor was holding her back. Sanji was thankful for the man for keeping Nami away from the fishmen as they did whatever cruel things to her mother.

More screams sounded from the direction of the house near them. The crew found themselves being pushed over that way, or they were subconsciously walking over to see the horrible act for themselves. Either way, the memory stayed in the same position as the man spoke to the girls again.

The crew members who walked over to the side of the building looked over in horror at the thugs surrounding the front of the building. They were wearing hoodies and looked more like gangsters than pirates. _"100 thousand beli for adults. 50 thousand beli for kids. If you can buy your family's worth, I'll spare your life. Think of it as divine mercy."_

Sanji was still behind the building with Nami, he was on his knees with an arm around her shoulder as she hid her face in his chest. He tried to keep out any erotic thoughts as there was a time and place for everything, and at the moment he had to be serious.

Zoro watched the fishmen as they grinned menacingly at the injured woman on the ground. He was happy he cut so many of them up when he visited that island.

Genzo was bent down over the woman on the ground in front of the house. The spinning pinweel on his head made Luffy smile for a brief second before remembering that this was probably when Nami's mom was going to die. _"Hey there's food for three in here!"_

"That voice!" Chopper shouted and spun around with a horrified look on his face.

"Hachi-san?!" Brook shouted as he gaped at the fishman.

"Yeah, he was one of their top officers," Usopp said with a blank expression. "He really has changed though, so try not to let this change your opinion of him." Even as the sniper said it, he had to look away from the six-armed fishman to stop himself from hating him."

_"Oh, a three person family eh?"_ Arlong asked and the man with the pinweel on his head chuckled with a dark look on his face and looked up.

_"It must've slipped my mind. Today, me and a good friend of mine were invited over for dinner. Come on Bellemere, the food's going to get cold."_

_ "Gen-san."_

_ "She seems to have the 100 thousand. Good thing we all have enough. Now everyone will be safe."_

"Wait, he's forgetting about Nami and Nojiko," Chopper stated and a few of the others seemed confused as well.

Robin seemed to understand the situation and looked back over at the other side of the house where Nami and Nojiko were standing on the path, able to hear everything they were. "It seems this Bellemere did not have the money to pay for both her and her daughters. These men knew this and came to stop Nami and Nojiko from going home."

The rest of them went back towards the other side of the building and watched as the Doctor put both girls in front of him and closed his eyes. From the side the pirates were on, they all heard one of the officers state, _"The census shows she's never been married nor had any kids. She's always been single."_

Both of the little girls in front of the Straw Hats went blue in the face. "Wait, why weren't you on the census?" Franky asked the woman who was getting to her feet, trying to gain control of herself in front of the others.

"Bellemere," she started in a whisper, "was our foster mother."

The old doctor in the white coat started talking to the girls, _"Understand? There's no proof that you two and Bellemere are a family. Leave this island before they find out! Cross the sea and escape! There's no other way we can afford to save all three of you. I know it's unreasonable to send you two youngsters out to see. Something could go wrong, but even if there's the slightest chance..."_

_ "No. I don't want to! Why do we have to leave?"_ The crew didn't want to watch Nami's sad reaction to the decision placed before her. They started walking back over to the other side of the building where everything was blurrier but they could still make out the pirates and the humans. _"They're the ones who invaded us. I want to stay in the village."_

Past Nami had tears streaming down her face and Luffy kept watching the whole time, his rage growing inside him. He stopped himself from creating a scene and a sudden outburst solely on instinct, that it was not the right time for it.

_"Is it because we're poor, that we can't be Bellemere-san's daughters? Why? Why does it have to be this way?"_

The crew watching the other side of the building saw Arlong start to walk away with the money and Bellemere was leaning against her door with a smile on her face. _"Thank God that I could save..."_

Behind the building, Nojiko started storming away and stated, _"Fine, we're leaving the island."_

_"Nojiko,"_ little Nami pleaded with her sister.

_"We're leaving, that way Bellemere-san will be safe."_

The crew looked back and forth on each side of the house as the Arlong pirates walked one way, and Nojiko walked the other. Nami and her mom were only separated by the thin walls of the building, but it looked like they were never going to see each other again.

Zoro looked back at the navigator and suddenly his opinion of her money-loving tendencies changed. There was clearly something in her past that made her afraid not to have money. He even thought about not yelling angrily in response next time she charged him interest on money he borrowed.

_"Hold up! Who said that was my share?"_

"No," Franky said in disbelief. The guilt of what had happened to Tom was weighing down on his shoulders, but he still was able to feel sympathy for what was about to happen. He knew a little about Nami's past from the conversation with Jimbei on Fishman Island, but nothing like this.

_"That one hundred thousand is for my two daughters. I'm short on mine."_ Everyone in the memory and in the present froze where they were and stared at the crazy woman who was signing her own death warrant.

Gen had sweat pouring down his face, _"Bellemere you..."_

_"Sorry Gen-san, I can't deny I don't have a family. Even if it means sacrificing my life."_ On the walls around them, they saw Nami and Nojiko looking back at the house with wide mouths. They started running across the air in front of them and seemed to pass right through Usopp making the man shiver.

The girls ran towards their mother's voice. _"We may not be blood-related, but we're still a family. I wish I could be a mother simply by saying it. Those two, are my daughters right?"_

_ "Bellemere-san!"_ both of the little girls shouted as they ran around the side of the house. The woman in the memory seemed confused and alarmed that they were coming to her.

Nami kept shouting, _"I was lying. It was a lie Bellemere-san!"_

"Lying?" Brook whispered in the air not expecting a response.

He didn't realize how close the adult Nami was to him however, and the woman started answering right behind him. "Earlier that day I got in trouble for stealing and told Bellemere that I would have rather been adopted by a rich family."

The woman in the flashback knew what the little girl was referring to and started crying as she wrapped her injured arms around the children. _"I really wanted to buy you more stuff, like books and clothes. I'm sorry I couldn't have been more of a mother to you two."_

"At least she was there," Robin tried comforting and Nami nodded before turning to the woman with black hair. There were tears flowing down Nami's face but as she looked at the older woman, she couldn't see her friend's eyes. Her hair cast a shadow over the top half of her face as she watched the heartwrenching scene in front of them.

The green haired swordsman looked over at Franky and they nodded to each other, both remembering the short flashback where the woman with white hair left Robin at such a young age. _She was probably only three or four years old, wouldn't remember something like that if it wasn't bad._ Franky looked over at the woman and wondered, _Just what are you thinking about Nico Robin?_

The little girls were shouting that they didn't want their mother to die and it was a hard thing to watch when the whole crew had already figured out how this memory was ending. _"You need to see the map I'm gonna draw of the whole world!"_

_ "Map, that's right. You need to fulfill your dreams. Live on ok?"_

_ "Bellemere-san!"_

Usopp looked around as he suddenly realized something and he thought about it for a few seconds. _Mine and Nami's mothers told us to fulfill our dream before they died. Zoro had that girl who died. Sanji is finding All Blue, but that's also the old man Zeff's dream so he's fulfilling it for him. I'm sensing a trend here._ The pirate looked up again and his heart fell as he saw Arlong's looming figure above the three girls.

_"These are your daughters eh?_

_ "Yeah that's right. You have to promise to leave these two girls alone."_

_ "Of course! As long as you die."_ As Arlong finished speaking, Gen pulled out pistols and started shooting at the captain. One of the officers. Kuroobi, got in front and blocked them with his extra hard fin. He then slashed the man across the chest with it and knocked him to the floor.

"This is going to get messy," Robin said in disgust as a huge crowd of people were coming running up the hill behind Arlong and his men.

_"Don't kill them. Just show them what we're made of."_ The pirate walked over towards Bellemere who shoved her kids inside the open door of her house, _"You'll set a perfect example."_ He raised a pistol towards her, _"You'll die for your pathetic love."_

All around them, the villagers were getting beaten senseless by the fishmen. Blood was spurting everywhere as the people went down with horrible wounds.

"I can't watch," Chopper ran around the side of the building where he couldn't see anymore and he tried holding his ears shut.

Arlong held out his pistol right to Bellemere's chest as she crossed her arms. _"Nojiko, Nami."_ She paused and turned her head a bit to stare at her kids, _"I love you."_ The gun fired and the woman was thrown back forcefully as blood spurted from her chest and right out the back of her shirt.

The former marine bent back at the knees as her body went limp. Nami was sobbing as she watched her mother die for the second time. "No, no no no." The woman bent down at the knees, she thought she could watch it for her mother's sake without breaking down, but she couldn't handle the feelings it brought back.

_"During my reign, people without money will be killed! Do you inferiors understand?!"_

"Racist," Usopp grumbled as the others were screaming insults at the fishman.

They watched Hachi reach down to Bellemere's body and many of them felt a surge of hatred for their fishman friend. _"What's this," _all he did was pull a piece of paper from her pocket but it still made them angry. _"A map?"_

_"Stop it! That's a special map I drew, give it back!"_

_ "You drew this?"_ the pirate captain was inrigued by the crying girls drawing.

_"Stop it!"_

_ "Oh, this is rather good. She could be useful, bring her with us."_

_ "Aye captain,"_ the crew growled at Hachi with disgusted looks as he picked Nami back up and started walking. They looked over at their Nami who was sobbing quietly on the floor as the memory was starting to break apart around them.

They watched as Nami screamed that she didn't want to go and that she wanted Gen to save her. The man with the pinwheel on his head challenged Arlong directly, but the captain told Kuroobi to finish him and the officer sliced Gen more times than they could count.

"So that's why he had all those scars," Zoro muttered while staring at the man with respect. Gen's body was torn to shreds and they panicked but realized it was just the memory of him that was tearing.

"You mean he survived?" Chopper asked, amazed with all the injuries he sustained.

"If he didn't he wouldn't have been able to keep paying Arlong." Usopp started, "There would have been no profit from killing him." As harsh as it sounded, it was the truth.

This memory was big and as it tore to shreds, the fabric of the walls around them shook. The violent shaking knocked a few members of the crew off of their feet while some of the others raged quietly as they stared at Nami's crying figure.

A huge chunk of memory that was park of the blue sky got darker, but not the pitch black of everything around them. It changed shape and started to show the middle of a village that a few of them remembered. "It's Cocoyashi village," Sanji said as he looked around at the villagers whose faces he remembered.

Young Nami was standing in the middle of a crowd with a sad look on her face but everyone else was staring at her in shock.

_"I'm gonna be in Arlong's crew, I'm gonna be a map-drawer and draw maps for them!"_ The girl put a smile on her face that looked real and some of the crew members had trouble telling that it was fake.

"But, but he killed your mom," Chopper started as he looked to the woman on the ground near him. When the memory of her mother being shot ended, she managed to turn back around and walk over to them. It was too hard to watch, but the sound of the pistol was enough to make her knees unable to hold herself up.

"I was, doing it, for them," the girl managed between sobs and the reindeer shut his mouth feeling guilty for suggesting something bad.

Gen walked over from the crowd, bandages covering his body, _"What are you talking about Nami? Are you for real?"_

He bent down in front of her and held her by the shoulders, _"Did they make you do this? That's what happened right?"_

_ "No!"_

_ "They threatened you to right?!"_

_ "NO!"_

_ "Tell the truth!"_

_ "LET GO OF ME!" _The little girl swung herself out of the man's grip and turned towards the crowd and the crew for the first time. There was a blue tattoo just like the ones on the pirate crew's bodies.

_"Nami!"_

Four of the crew members were confused as they looked over towards Nami's arm. "You got a new tattoo," Robin said with a small smile as she saw the mikan growing on the end of it.

"I couldn't stand the old one," Nami whispered as she looked up at another terrible memory.

_"T-That's Arlong's tattoo,"_ the doctor said from in the crowd.

_"You,"_ Genzo said in disbelief.

_"Nami,"_ her sister was just as shocked as everyone else.

The little orange haired girl held up a stack of bills. She had tears coming out of her eyes, but they looked like tears of joy on her smiling face. _"Look at all this. I got all this money! Hahah, hahaha, They're gonna buy me whatever I want!"_ Now Zoro knew there was something wrong with her obsession with money and looked at the crying woman with orange hair with pity.

Nojiko tackled her sister to the ground, and a few of the Straw Hats were feeling confused and somewhat angry at their navigator's behavior. _"I won't forgive you! I won't! You're becoming a pirate? I'll never forgive you! Do you even know what they did?"_

_ "So what? If you live properly and die like Bellemere-san did, then I don't wanna live properly!"_

Her sister started yelling at her and a few members of the crew felt they needed to say something but before they could, Nami stood up. "I didn't mean a word of it." Tears were streaming down her face as she spoke but the guilt of the words her past version just said was weighing down on her. "I had to make them hate me, so that they wouldn't try to save me. It was the only way to keep them alive."

Gen turned his back on Nami and shouted, _"Get the Hell out of here Nami! Never step foot in this village ever again!"_

The crew looked to the man angrily, but his face was far more furious than any of their's and they softened their expressions. The man started to get blurry as the fragment of Nami's original memory expanded and shredded.

"To make sure a large fragment from the orginal. Hehehehe, that must've been a really tough memory to watch. Hahahahha," the voice faded as the crew members screamed at the high pitched voice coming from the sky.

"When I get my hands on that little twerp," Usopp wrung his hands together and even though Sanji was watching, the man didn't stop his threats. He looked at his Nami who was staring at her childhood self, the young girl on the verge of tears but holding it in.

As the little girl vanished, the smaller memory broke into two more fragments that separated in the sky on either side of them. One had Nami in a dark cage, the door was open and some fishman tossed a loaf of bread at her. The other had the girl sitting down at a desk with a pen in her hands, writing and ignoring the blood dripping through her fingers and on the floor below her. There were stacks of maps around her and she only looked a little older than in the earlier memories.

The thing the people watching saw about both memories, was that Nami's face looked exactly the same. She wasn't crying, or sad, her face was blank and she looked like she was trying hard not to cry or feel the pain she was in.

As those two last fragments disappeared into wisps like the rest of the room, Chopper walked over to Nami and hugged her leg. His warm fur pressed into her and she tried to smile at the feeling.

_"Doctor! Doctor let me in!"_ Everyone looked to their right as a memory was surrounding them fast after Nami's disappeared. The woman felt the warm hug on her leg disappear and turned her head to see Chopper staring at the memory with hurt in his eyes.

_"I promise I'll clean every day and work really hard. So please,"_ the memory cleared up in front of them and they could all see a younger version of Chopper wearing his old pink hat. _"Please let me in Doctor. I don't have any friends. I don't have anywhere to go! Doctor, Doctor!"_

Sanji was looking up at the white mountain with a door on it, "Is that where Hiluluk lives?" Their version of Chopper nodded and the chef frowned.

"What's wrong Chopper-san?" Brook asked, confused by what was happening.

The door to the mountain stayed closed despite all of Chopper's pleading and crying. The past version of the reindeer had a sudden idea and everyone lowered their bottom lips as he hit himself so hard in the head that he pierced his skin and blood started seeping down his face. Now the door opened and a man walked out as Chopper shouted up with a smile, _"Look Doctor, I'm hurt!"_ A gunshot rang out and they all watched as a slit of blood appeared on Chopper's right cheek.

"Chopper!" Usopp shouted, forgetting for a split second that it was a memory.

"Why'd he do that?" Robin asked in concern for the small reindeer.

"He was... he didn't want me..." Chopper started but his voice fell away.

_"Why Doctor?"_ the small furry version of their friend asked. The tears in his eyes hurt all of them and Nami was no longer thinking about her mom for the second, the reindeer's memory was stunning her. Everything she heard from Doctor Kureha was that he loved and cared for Chopper, so what was all this?

_"Your wounds have healed! Get going. Go out to sea or something," _he pointed the rifle in his hands down at their friend and Franky jumped in front of the bullets just for them to fly right through him. _"Never come back here!"_

"Doctor I'm sorry!" Chopper shouted in pain.

"You have nothing to be sorry about Chopper-san. He's the one..." Brook started but Chopper turned and glared at him.

"Don't say anything bad about Doctor!" he screamed and the skeleton fell backwards on his bony butt. Even in his small form, the reindeer's face scared them when he turned and snapped like that, "He was the greatest doctor ever!" The younger version of himself didn't seem to agree and just went sprinting into the forest and screaming as the bullets behind him stopped. While the memory faded around them, a few caught a glance of the Doctor in the distance and tears were flowing down his face.

"But..." Franky began and Sanji put a hand on his giant metal shoulder. The cyborg turned to the blonde man who had a lit cigarette in his mouth and cocked his head to the side.

"Just don't ask," Sanji remembered a portion of Doctorine's story about Chopper and he knew that if it could be helped, he'd try to let the doctor on their ship keep it a secret. Everyone was feeling sad and confused from not only Chopper and Nami's memories, but all the ones before that were starting to weigh down on them.

"Hey," Luffy said in a calm voice and everyone looked over to see him staring up at the sky. "You gonna let us out of here now, or wait 'till later?" He received no response and just continued, "Either way, I'm gonna kick your ass when I get out." Sanji fumed at his captain but held it in, there was no way he could justify what this insane girl was doing. Even if he wasn't going to hit her himself, he wasn't going to stop his captain.

The girl's voice didn't respond and the crew went back to looking around at the wisps floating around them. "This is pointless," Zoro grumbled as he tried to pick out which memory would be the next one they watch. "All these shards of memories, the girl is controlling all of this. Those memories aren't actually flying by us, they're being put there for some of us to see and hear."

"Wrong!" a shrill voice called out. "My power digs through your minds while you're all connected. Those are the other strong memories I have to push through to get to the really sad ones."

"Oh, I see," the swordsman stated with a smirk.

"Wait, did you just," the little girl shouting at the was in a fury. "You tricked me!"

"I did," Zoro responded.

"Just for that, let's see how you like this!" Zoro expected something to come flying at him and he put his hands on his swords. Instead, the wisps around them took no time at all to start merging together all around until they were all inside a building. At first they assumed it was Zoro's memory because of the conversation that had just occurred between the two, but they didn't see the boy anywhere.

The room was bland, but it had a few picture frames up on the white walls. _"I'm sorry,"_ the crew looked around the room and saw two people lying on beds near the far wall. They each had brown hair and were smiling at each other as the man in the white coat kept talking, _"You lost too much blood in the attack. The bandits pierced arteries and it took me too long to seal them up. You won't pull through."_

_ "Thank you for trying doctor."_

_ "We really appreciate all you've done for us," _the woman added on to her husband.

"Look," Chopper pointed at one of the picture frames away from the three people in the room. On it, the smiling man had his arm around his wife while they were standing side by side. On his left shoulder sat a boy with green hair, only five or six years old. "It is Zoro!"

"Oh yeah, this," the man turned over towards the door and the others turned to see it cracked open, a small head visible from the inside. The boy had a serious look on his face and had a piece of wheat in his mouth.

_"How long do we have doc?"_ the man asked with a smile.

_"Your wife only has about an hour, you might last for two. I'm sorry."_

_"Can you send in our son?"_

_ "Of course," _the doctor walked towards the door and opened it but the memory around them was already ripping apart. _"Zoro, Zoro!" _the man shouted his name a second time but the little boy was already out the door and running down the path as the memory followed him.

It was ripping apart as they were forced to follow the boy, but he didn't stop until he reached a small building towards the edge of the village they were in. It had a burnt roof and there were sheets outside with corpses lying on them, blankets covering their faces and bodies.

"What was all this?" Usopp asked as he looked around.

"A group of bandits attacked the village I grew up in," Zoro replied as he watched himself.

_"Hey Zoro,"_ an old man called from outside of the building. _"Come help me with this,"_ the six year old walked over and lifted one side of the body the man was dragging out of the building. It was a teenage girl and her clothes were ripped up, from the looks of it, the bandits didn't finish her quickly. Sanji started screaming in hatred against whoever did this and his body was ablaze but everyone else were just looking at the oddly calm look on the green haired boy's face.

_"Old man,"_ the boy whispered. The man looked at the kid who stared back at him, _"That man who sliced up and killed the bandits who was he?"_

The memory was trying to rip apart but it was being held together. "What's wrong?" Zoro asked at the sky with a smirk on his face. "Trying to hold together my memory won't work, it's not strong enough." The grin on his face looked evil as his eyes almost looked red.

_"Ah, that man was an odd one. I'm pretty sure he was a Doujouyaburi. Though the best word to describe him would be, 'swordsman.'_

_ "Alright,"_ a determined look came over the boy's face, _"__goodbye old man." _The kid placed the teenager down on the sheet and then started running to the edge of town where he kept running.

The memory continued to follow the kid for about a minute in silence before it finally tore apart. "I don't get it!" the enemy's voice shouted and Zoro laughed at her frustration. The other crew members were looking at the man with a mix of fear and confusion. His parents had died and he just walked away from the village, not even saying goodbye to them. "That was a hidden memory, more sadness than most you have."

"Ooh," the man said with mock interest. "If that was one of the worst, then I'd have to say I'm disappointed in you, child." He unleashed his Shuusui and swung it once up at the air where a flying attack was sent off towards the sky in the right.

"Ahh!" the room began shaking around them but quickly regained control. "Y-You!" the girl was beyond frustrated now.

"Hmm, did I get close to hitting you?" Zoro asked. "I could've swore I heard your voice coming from over there. Probably because you lost focus," the man's smirk was making them all feel on edge.

"H-How about this?!" the girl shouted and the memory started changing again.

This time as the wisps came together and the group saw Zoro, he was much older than the last time. His green hair was cropped as always, but he had an angry look on his face.

"What's going on?" Nami asked, wiping the tears away from her eyes. Bellemere's image couldn't get out of her mind, but she figured distracting herself would be better. She was referring to the fires all around Zoro and the explosions blowing up the land around him.

He was standing on top of a hill with two swords in his hands. None of them recognized the weapons as his and figured it must have been before Kuina died. They didn't know how he came into possession of her sword, but he had it now and was never without it.

The man felt like explaining so the crew wouldn't ask countless questions during the memory he recognized. "The country my dojo was in was run by corrupt leaders. The neighboring village thought they could escape without paying the incredibly high taxes put on them." Zoro looked around at the burning buildings in front of his former self, "They were wrong."

"No way," Usopp whispered, "this is the island's government's doing?"

"Yes," the man responded.

_"Ahhh!"_ Kid Zoro started charging down the hill but was tackled from behind.

They all turned and saw the girl whose death they learned about only thirty minutes ago. _"Baka! You'll be killed if you go down there." _

"Good at least she has some sense," Chopper sighed in relief.

_"Then what are you doing?!"_ the kid asked the girl who was holding her Wado Ichimonji.

_"I said __**you'll **__be killed, but I'm better than you,"_ she got off of the kid and the crew members' eyes went wide as they saw her sprint down the hill with her weapon drawn.

Zoro stumbled to his feet as well and charged down the path into the burning village. Explosions kept ringing out and screams came from every direction. The boy saw two people in fireproof suits run out of a building carrying guns and he charged at them.

The men inside panicked and raised their weapons but the boy had already slashed through their clothes and spun, knocking the now naked men backwards into the fire they created. Their screams filled the night sky as they burned alive in front of Zoro.

He stared with wide eyes at them men and the present version of Zoro stated as he scratched his chin, "Those were probably the first men I killed. Maybe, I don't really remember them that much." The growl of frustration that came from the sky made the others know that their swordsman was really getting to the girl they were up against.

_Keep it up Moss Head, you might actually get up out of here._ Sanji frowned at the idea that Zoro was the one with the plan and was carrying it out so well so far. Their opponent was getting angry, and sloppy as well.

"Did they really need to die?" Chopper asked feeling like Zoro went a little far. He was a doctor and always wanted to save lives, no matter how injured someone was or if they were an enemy or not.

"Yes," for the first time since his memories began showing themselves to the crew, they heard a tone shift in Zoro's voice. A few seconds later, they understood why he felt that way.

_"Stop, please! Let him go!"_ the crew looked over towards a burning building when three of the men in flame retardent suits were holding a young boy, about Zoro's age. They tossed the screaming kid inside the house right as a huge fireball exploded out from the inside and the roof collapsed.

_"RAAHHH!" _the green-haired kid screamed and started running towards the men. One of them rose a pistol and shot the wailing mother in the head before turning to where he heard the screaming Zoro.

_"Remember, we're to make a message out of them. Anyone who opposes the government will be killed, without exceptions..."_ the man froze up as he saw the kid charging at him with a beast-like expression on his face.

Zoro cut the men up as if they were nothing, the men moaning on the ground as Zoro stared at them with his swords raised. Suddenly a scream rang out and they all recognized it, _"Kuina!"_ the boy turned and ran down the street, turning at the next corner and his whole body trembled as he froze all movement.

_"Make sure the bodies are out of the buildings before they're completely burnt up. We need the other villages to see what happens to people who disobey us."_

Usopp threw up his lunch on the spot, the orange liquid going all over the memory grass. Nami covered her eyes and now had a new sight she wanted to get out of her mind.

Luffy and Franky stood next to each other wide their mouths open, their foreheads turning blue as sweat dripped down their faces. Brook screamed and covered his skull's eye sockets. Every single member of the crew except for Zoro were shocked and only Robin managed not to gasp, scream, or cry.

In front of them stood over thirty of the men in the suits and they were dragging around melted corpses. Some of the bodies were much smaller than the others and looked like they belonged to children. The men were tossing them in a basket that had two horses tied to it with men on top of each.

A body landed on top of a few others inside and the crew watched in horror as the woman it belonged to reached up a blackened arm, burnt crispy. _"We've got a live one,"_ a man inspecting the carriage called out. _"I've got it."_

The gunshot that followed snapped flashback Zoro back to reality and he spun around looking for Kuina, _"We have to get out of here."_ The little boy whispered it so quietly that only a few of the crew members heard him. Then they saw his face as he lifted it up and his lip was trembling, he was scared out of his wits and his face showed it. _"Kuina!"_ he called out and they noticed it wasn't as loud as he'd been shouting before.

"What, you didn't want them to hear you?" Sanji remarked but the other man didn't come back with a quip which made his question seem harsh in the moment. Even Sanji could understand what the boy was going through. He'd like to imagine that he wouldn't have run if it were him, but then he knew he'd be lying.

_"Hiyaa!"_ the boy heard the voice and ran around the side of a building where he saw four men with swords pointing them at the girl in the middle of them. She was holding her one sword in front of her and there were two squirming bodies on the ground around her.

_"You can't escape brat!"_ the girl looked like she'd already been dealt a serious blow and all the fear they saw on kid Zoro's face disappeared as he sprinted forwards and jumped over the men around her's heads. He landed with his back to her and he rose his two swords to face the men as well.

_"Zoro,"_ the girl said with a small smile, feeling relieved. _"I thought I told you to stay back, this is no place..."_

_"Kuina, we need to get out of here," _the girl was shocked at his words as he held his weapons towards the enemy. _"They're insane, they're going to..."_

The girl behind Zoro elbowed him hard in the side without even turning around. _"Who is this coward that stands beside me? I don't know anyone who would say something like that if they saw what I've been seeing."_ This seemed to strike a cord with young Zoro and the future version who stared at her as she glared down their murderous enemies.

_ "If you're too scared, run, but never show your face to me again challenging me to a duel. I won't accept you as a swordsman. A scar on the back is a swordsman's shame."_

_"Rah!"_ the girl turned her head slightly and saw the little boy behind her bashing his swords against his opponents', each one trying to defend one of his weapons.

They all saw her grin at that and she turned and started fighting the men as well.

_"They're over here!"_ the Straw Hats looked back around the corner they were just looking down and all the men in yellow suits were charging over at them. There wre now four men at their feet, but dozens more were encircling them, and many had guns in their hands.

_"Zoro,"_ the girl stated between pants and the boy grunted in acknowledgement between his own staggered breathing. Both of their tired faces were replaced by menacing grins and dark shadows, _"Let's finish this."_

The men all around them took a step back as they felt unnerved by the statement from the girl and the wicked smile on her face. Zoro laughed and the smile spread on his as well, _"Yeah!"_ the two of them sprinted fast in different directions and the men circled around them fired, only to hit their friends on opposite sides of the circle.

"Whoa," Usopp said, recovering from his embarrassing incident a few seconds ago. The man wiped his mouth of the last bit of hot dog that was on his chin and he looked around as Zoro and Kuina were slashing back and forth before Zoro got hit in the side by the butt of one man's gun.

_"Oof,"_ Zoro dropped to the floor and a man stepped on the side of his head, pressing his face into the dirt road between two burning buildings.

_"Zoro!"_ the girl next to him lost her concentration and she was cut on the side by a blade, her body spinning and landing next to Zoro's with blood seeping out of her wound.

The girl's eyes were fluttering and the kid with green hair watched as the men around them stopped panicking and started laughing. They raised their weapons and the small boy pushed himself with one arm, then the other which looked like it was bent the wrong way. He pushed himself until he was hovering right over Kuina's body and was preparing for the gunshots and blades to come down.

_"You kids have been a nuisance,"_ a man stomped on Zoro's back, pushing him down on top of the girl he was hovering over. _"Now die!" _he rose a gun over Zoro's head and then his eyes rolled back.

It was like a shockwave hit the village as every single person around the two children crumpled at the knees and collapsed.

"WHAT?!" Franky shouted, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets. A few of the other crew members had similar reactions.

"What just happened?" Chopper asked as he looked around.

"Was that Conqueror's Haki?" Usopp asked.

"Did you," Luffy started to ask his swordsman but the man was looking a different direction and Luffy followed his gaze.

A man in a green cloak was walking towards the group of people and the boy on top of Kuina pushed himself up before stepping in between her and the mysterious men walking towards him. The girl on the ground tried to say something, but she was turning pale and losing a lot of blood.

"_Don't worry, we are not here to hurt you. We came to save this village."_

Zoro lowered the swords he picked up as he made his way to his feet. They had just somehow defeated all the men who were about to kill him so he gave them the benefit of the doubt and turned back to the problem at hand. _"Please,"_ the boy dropped to his knees and bowed his head, _"help Kuina."_

_"Baka,"_ the girl beside him sputtered out as she got to her knees behind him. The boy was prostrated in front of the new people, but Kuina got up while he was turned and rose a hand, pounding him on top of the head. _"I never said, I needed your help,"_ she looked dizzy and pale, but she wasn't about to accept help from the boy she worked so hard to stay ahead of.

_"Ivankov,"_ the man in front of the pack stated and suddenly three people there dropped their jaws.

"Iva-chan?"

"IVAN!"

"Dragon?" the woman with the long black hair questioned and the others looked to her before turning back to the man in front of them.

"W-w-wait a second," Usopp started and backed up a few steps, "that's Monkey D. Dragon? The most wanted man in the world?"

"Yes," Robin said as the man stepped closer and a large form behind him started moving up as well. The person behind Dragon removed their hood and revealed a large head with huge purple hair.

"Ahh!" Sanji shouted, bad memories flooding his mind of running around the island of Okama.

"Iva-chan!" Luffy shouted in a more happy voice as he saw his friend for the first time in many years.

"You know these guys?" Zoro asked about the two people who had saved his life.

"Yeah, Iva-chan helped me in Impel Down. She saved my life," Sanji winced at the word 'she' but kept watching as the Okama queen walked closer to the two children on the ground.

Young Zoro was beginning to doubt his trust in these people as long finger nails extended from the huge person's hands. _"Super Healing Hormone!"_ the person shoved their hands into the sides of each of the children before they could say a word and instantly the memory broke apart. It was like glass shattering as all the buildings, dirt, sky, it all collapsed in an instant.

Once again they were flooded in darkness. "If you had really meant to make me see the painful part, you should have stopped when I suggested we run. It was really only that moment that I remembered. Guess you thought you could find something worse if you continued."

"I'm going to kill you!" the little girl screamed from up in the air to the left and they could all tell where she was this time. She must have realized it too because she started forming a new memory before any of the others could react.

"Crap," Franky lowered his left arm as he had no reason to fire anymore at the bright blue sky above him.

"Next time," Robin assured and was starting to feel hopeful that they really were going to escape from this place before she had to watch more of her memories. There was a reason she kept them all locked up tight.

Around them, they saw Zoro going around and slicing up a group of bandits. "Looks like she just grabbed any old memory that she thought could make me feel guilty. She's in a panic now," the man laughed, knowing that she could hear him and it felt good. "I don't even remember these fools," the men around him that were dropping like flies didn't ring a bell to him.

"How are you fine after watching those last memories?" Usopp asked with a stunned look on his face.

The man didn't respond and a few of the others were giving him confused and slightly scared looks. The navigator wasn't going to say anything, but she was staring at the memory in front of her and watched as one of Zoro's swords when right through a man's chest and he dropped to the ground with his eyes still open.

"You're killing them," Nami stated in shock. She'd always fought pirates and ran away, but even the most disgusting pirates she never killed. The only one she ever attempted to murder was Arlong.

"Yeah," he said as if it didn't matter. Honestly he did remember their faces. He didn't feel regret about what he'd done though, their bounties fetched him food for the next few days.

While the teenage version of Zoro did this, the others listened as Robin began speaking. "I spent much of the last two years with Dragon, but he never mentioned you once. He spoke of Luffy often, but it was as if he didn't remember you."

"Oh he probably did," Zoro stated as he looked away from himself and over at the black haired woman as well. "He's just upset that we turned him down is all."

"Turned him down?" Brook asked his fellow swordsman.

Zoro looked up with his one good eye at the skeleton and smirked, "Luffy's dad asked the two of us to join him and help other villages like the one we were just in. He thought that by giving us a long speech about how evil other governments were, we were going to follow him. The look on his face when we denied him and went back to training while he was still docked on our island, it was actually pretty funny." The man turned to his captain and then thought of something, "Hey, what did that Sabo kid look like?"

"Huh?" Luffy asked. "Oh, um, he had blonde hair, wore blue clothes..."

"Yeah, he was there," Luffy's face filled with shock and glee at the sound of that. "He had bandages on and a few burn marks on his body, so I'm guessing it was right after when you thought he was killed. Around thirteen years old."

"That's him!" the captain with the straw hat was so glad that his brother was alive that now everyone was ignoring the memory going on around them.

"I still can't believe Luffy has another brother," Usopp commented.

"I wonder if he's as polite as Ace was. That man was a gentleman," Nami replied and they both nodded remembering the older brother's visit in Alabasta.

"Enough of this!" The memory around them started to shake like it was caught in an earthquake. The group saw the version of Zoro from only a few years ago start to spin around and get sucked into a vortex. The flashback was starting to eat up its surroundings and the 'Weakling Trio' screamed as they hugged each other in the vibrating world.

The little girl kept shouting, "While you were all enjoying the last memory, I found something that'll be _really _fun to watch."

"Zoro can take it!" Usopp shouted at the sky.

"Yeah, he'll take anything you dish out!" Chopper added.

"Oi!" the man yelled at the other two and they shut up.

"Let's see how long you can keep saying that." The little girl's voice cackled and died away and the others looked around at the darkness as it fell upon them. It wasn't as dark as the pitch black they were previously in, but it was dark outside and they were in the middle of a destroyed battlefield.

"Look," Chopper pointed and they all followed where he was gazing to see a huge mansion with holes in it. "We're back on Thriller Bark."

"No," Sanji whispered and he turned his head slowly. Brook and Robin were both looking as well towards the swordsman who was staring a different direction than the rest of them.

"Shit," Zoro spoke and everyone turned around and gasped at the man who looked more like a bear standing in the middle of the clearing.

"Kuma," the thirty year old woman stated as she looked at the Shichibukai.

**A/N Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and again thanks for all the wonderful feedback. Will probably get another update in tomorrow, but then I'm heading north for some skiing Friday morning into the weekend so you might not see another for a few days. 'Till then, bye.**

Anana16

I love your story, is so good! And I can not wait to see the next chapter! ;) Excuse me for my English but I'm French

**Your English is great and thank you.**

RedZoro

I love you ! XD  
And this chapter to!  
And that's Just to say you I'm a fan and I've got nothing more to say...  
:)

**:))))**

usagi

Hey :) i love the new chapter :) thanks for posting so much so fast ;) i like how you wrote about little robin and the scene with dogra... i'm eager to read more about chopper and zoro

**Well you got some Chopper and Zoro here... wonder how you knew this chapter would be theirs? Haha, thanks for the review!**

Ralman23

This is really good hope you update

**Thank you and I'll try to keep updating fast.**

AskoII

I'm writing something with the whole crew's memories too and I gotta say that your seems far much better. It motivates me to take a look at my story and make it better! So I'm grateful and look forward to reading more!

**Great to hear feedback from another write. Thank you and I'm happy to be a motivation! :P**

shinxshinx1595

One thing I have to worry about is if Luffy's memory of Ace's death and words would make him snap... couldn't some Haoshoku Haki overpower the little girl and end the montague?

**I'd say the girl's ability to trap the entire crew in this plane makes her strong enough not to be knocked out by Conqueror's Haki. This montage is far from over teehee, ;p. See you all next time!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4:**

"Huh?" Luffy looked around at his crewmates and then over at his past crewmates who were all standing around. "This bear guy was at Thriller Bark?"

Usopp hit him on the back of the head, "We told you that a hundred times!"

"Oh," Luffy said with a finger in his ear, twisting it around to get out some ear wax. "Guess I didn't hear you."

"More like you weren't listening," Franky corrected as they stared at the hulking form of the pirate Warlord in front of them. Luffy was lying on the ground unconscious, but the rest of the crew were happy that they'd just defeated Gecko Moria.

The past version of Zoro moved so fast they didn't even see him before he appeared in front of the large man. _"Pirate Hunter Zoro, I'll start with you."_

"I thought he just knocked all of you guys out?" Luffy asked, recalling a few things they'd told him during the party the next day.

"No, we fought him first," Nami stated, "or at least we tried."

All the pirates with Lola who had been trapped by Moria started shouting how they had to fight the man anyway but Zoro just stated, _"Shut up and stay back! He's after me, didn't you hear him? I'll take him on. I don't need your help. Don't humiliate me."_

"Zoro, perhaps you should tell him now," Robin suggested as Bartholomew Kuma started speaking to the memory version of Zoro. "It may be worse to just let them see for themselves."

"You know?" he asked angrily.

"Sorry, eavesdropping is an old habit of mine," the woman responded, "but my point stands."

"I agree Zoro-san," Brook stated and the green haired man already knew that the skeleton was awake the whole time.

"What are you guys talking about?" Usopp asked and looked to Sanji to see if he knew what their whispers were for. The chef had a dark look on his face as well though and he just lit up a cigarette and frowned deeper.

In the flashback, Zoro tried slashing through the bear man, but Kuma moved instantly to a different spot. When the pirate looked back for a second, he missed the man appearing directly in front of him with his hands raised above Zoro's head. The hand came down hard and the ground exploded, but Zoro had dove out of the way and went spinning through the air before landing with a strained look on his face.

Although Kuma never touched the ground, his paw print was pressed into the floor leaving a deep hole all the way to the bottom of the large pirate ship. The Shichibukai turned to Zoro and pressed his hand forward, sending a paw of air cracking into the man and through him where it left holes in all of the rocks behind him.

As the former version of the crew talked about how silly his devil fruit sounded, a much less robotic-looking Franky said, _"We're probably overestimating this guy." _As soon as the words were out of his mouth, a paw print flew out of the sky and through his chest.

The other members of the Straw Hats turned and watched as Franky was thrown backwards. Present Franky felt stupid looking back on himself saying something like that.

"Whoa," Luffy gawked. He'd seen some of the things the man could do at Sabaody and during the War of the Best, but these attacks were new to him.

_"Franky!"_

_ "Cyborg Franky, is that all you have to offer?"_ Kuma asked and then began explaining his attack to the freaking out Straw Hats. His gaze was focused on Zoro the entire time though.

"What's so bad about this memory?" Chopper asked the others.

"It looks like Zoro was the one who held it back which is why she's using it," Usopp said and looked to see a few of the other crew members looking uneasy at the conversation.

"Yeah, I don't get it either, so let's just watch." Luffy shut everyone up with his sentiment and stared forward with the others. The captain was smiling and looked happy to get to watch the bear man before he stopped being human. He remembered how Ivankov described him and wanted to see if the man was really different from how he remembered.

The large man and Zoro started fighting again. Kuma shot pad after pad of compressed air at the swordsman as he spun and dodged between every attack. All three of his swords were drawn and he was ready for a full fledged fight. Zoro finally got close enough to attack, but the man blocked with his paws, deflecting his opponent across the battlefield. The Straw Hats, present and past were staring at the fight in amazement. Somehow, even after the battles with Oz, Ryuma, and Moria, Zoro was still on his feet and fighting an even stronger opponent.

Zoro crashed into the ground and rolled across the broken stones, breaking more in his wake. The bear-man appeared behind Zoro and was about to finish him off when Sanji flew across the air and kicked hard into the Warlord's face.

_"Mind your own business!" _The flashback version of Zoro shouted and then froze as he saw Sanji grabbing his leg in pain. Past Usopp and Chopper were shouting with joy that Sanji had done it and suddenly became very silent and scared that Sanji was the one in pain from the attack.

"It was like a thousand knives shoved themselves in my kneecap. I don't know what his head is made of, but at that time I had no chance of damaging it." Sanji admitted to the crew watching, thinking back to how weak he was then.

_"Black Leg Sanji, so that's you,"_ Kuma was referring to each of them based off of their wanted poster names.

The crew was freaking out and Usopp shot a firebird star only for it to be deflected back at him. The flaming bird hit the sniper and exploded in a ball of fire.

"Luffy," Zoro started in a serious tone. The other crew members around him all turned to look at the one-eyed swordsman. He looked very serious and no one looked back at the memory after seeing the look on his face. "There's something I should tell you..."

_"I have no interest in destroying you all when you're in such a worn-out shape. My mission is to exterminate every single one of you but,"_ the man in the flashback put his arms over his head and started pushing them together. A huge transparent paw pad could be seen forming in the air and getting more visible as it became more compressed.

The pirates were looking back and forth from their Zoro to the Schichibukai as he prepared for the attack they were dreading. Usopp and Franky were already down on their knees and had blurry vision at this point. Their captain was down for the count, but the others all remembered this well.

_"The power of that much condensed air, returning to its former size,"_ Luffy looked at the memory Nico Robin who had a grim look on her face. _"Without a doubt will generate a massive shock wave. Just like a bomb."_

"After you were knocked out, and everyone else was defeated, I continued to fight Kuma." Zoro stated and the others who didn't already know this turned to him in surprise.

"Wait," Nami cut him off there, "is that why you were so injured after the battle and in Sabaody?"

The man winced and growled that she reminded him of that, "Yes, that's the reason."

Before Zoro could continue, the beast man in front of him held a bomb in his hands. Inside them was a small ball of light that glowed over and over again as it beat like a heart. _"I will spare your lives,"_ all the pirates seemed to be overjoyed at the sound of this. _"But in exchange, I want you to bring me Strawhat Luffy's head."_

"Not my head!" Luffy shouted, holding his head down to his shoulders and received a punch from behind from Nami.

"Of course we didn't give it to him," she shouted at the captain.

_"As long as they have him, the government won't mind."_ He waited while every pirate in front of him set a hard face and looked determined back at the Warlord. _"Now bring him to me."_

_"FORGET IT!"_ A hundred pirates under Lola and all of the Straw Hats shouted at the same time. Luffy smiled that not one of them even considered handing him over to the government. He felt like telling them that they should've taken the offer, but everyone ended up okay, so it was the best option anyway.

"Kuma didn't like that response," Usopp gulped as he realized what was coming next.

_"It's a shame,"_ the bear man twisted his hands and then opened them up. The pad of light shot out from his paws and floated towards the center of the clearing, smack in the middle of all the pirates.

The paw pad stopped moving and stated to get bigger slowly, then exponentially faster as everyone stared in horror at the transparent ball. _"Ursus Shock."_

A huge white light engulfed them all as the ball exploded outwards and collided with all the pirates around Kuma. The force of the explosion was the only part of it as there were no flames or shrapnel. Then again, the force was all that was needed. Luffy's eyes went wide as saucers as he saw for the first time the magnitude of the explosion.

The shockwave tore through the pirates and everyone looked on in terror for the first time. Last time they were knocked out when the blast hit them, now they were able to watch as the wave ripped through the castle and knocked individual people flying into buildings and off into the distance.

Then Franky pointed and the rest of the crew followed to where they saw Zoro pressed against a rock by the force of the explosion, but he was using one sword to slice any debris that flew his way. Past Zoro pushed off the wall and even as he was getting pushed back, the man was in front of the collapsed body of Nami and he was stopping all the boulders and castle pieces from falling on her.

"Aww," Usopp teased the man as Zoro blushed a little and turned away.

"That was," Nami started and then stopped. _Kuina died falling down steps, and she was the strongest girl Zoro knew. He probably thought I was the most likely to die from that explosion. Either way, I can't believe..._ "Thank you."

Sanji was stunned, as well as angry with himself. All he could do after the explosion was grab onto a crack in the ground and keep himself from being blown away. He was dazed after getting hit by a flying piece of debris and didn't know what was going on for a few minutes afterwards.

While Zoro was protecting Nami, each crew member watched their bodies get thrown into buildings or across the area. Everyone was scattered from each other and they all watched as the giant mast of Thriller Bark started to come down. Glass shattered from every window before the frames of the windows themselves and even the entire structure of those buildings started ripping apart and getting destroyed.

If they didn't wake up back then in the area like they did, the crew would have guessed that this was the end of the memory as the walls and ground were literally ripping apart around them.

The explosion just kept getting bigger and bigger and since most of the crew was already unconscious at this point, they had never seen the extent of the explosion. Usopp, Chopper, Brook, and Nami were all screaming as everything was being torn apart and this time it wasn't just the flashback. The memory world itself was being torn up and it looked like Thriller Bark was going to go down.

"Whoa," Franky shouted as the shaking began to simmer down. "Even after we woke up, I never knew the explosion was this bad. Somehow the ship survived, I'd love to meet whoever made it."

"Well it wasn't called the biggest ship in the world for nothing. If one attack had been able to destroy it, _that_ would have been surprising." Robin looked around the wasteland that appeared in front of them as the blinding white light started to go away.

The crew looked around in almost silence, the power of the bear-man still breathtaking. Kuma seemed like he wasn't even phased by his own explosion and stood in the same place he was before. The large man started marching like a robot through all the pieces of rocks and between injured pirates.

"Lola," Nami whispered as she saw the woman pirate's head crushed under a boulder. She knew that the woman turned out fine afterwards, but it still hurt to see a friend in that condition.

"What's he..." the crew followed him as he walked past Franky's sprawled out body, making the cyborg stop his sentence. He looked pathetic the way he was lying there, but it wasn't just him. Kuma kept walking past Brook who was stuck between two huge pieces of castle, and Nami's body that was oddly lying away from any debris with nothing on top of her.

A few of the members cast looks of appreciation towards Zoro who was just watching Kuma with dislike. The Shichibukai stopped and everyone followed his gaze before gasping. The man was standing right over their captain's limp body, Luffy still looking peacefully asleep after defeating Moria.

"Ahh, he's gonna get me!" Luffy shouted and started looking around at his crew members.

"Baka, he didn't get you," Nami pointed out as he was still there. "Wait, why didn't he get you?"

"As I was saying before," Zoro started, "I wasn't knocked out yet..."

"But how'd you get that guy to leave?" Usopp asked with a scared look on his face. The large man in the flashback touched his right hand to a boulder that was on top of Luffy's feet and the rock was thrown thousands of feet into the air until they couldn't see it anymore.

"Do you think that traveled as far away as we did when he touched us?" Chopper asked out of curiosity.

"I doubt it," Franky replied. "When you guys got touched, I didn't even see you disappear you were moving so fast. That rock probably landed somewhere in the ocean around here."

"Can I continue?!" Zoro asked, frustrated that everyone else kept butting in with their own comments. Chopper, Usopp, and Franky all took a step back from the man who was fuming and Zoro opened his mouth to speak again. Before a word could come out, Nami gasped loudly and he turned, going to tell her off but she was staring at Kuma who was bending down to grab Luffy. It looked like it was the end and only a select few members were looking for and saw the slight movement in the corners of their vision.

"Ahh!" everyone except for Robin, Sanji, and Zoro shouted as the past version of Zoro flew past their visions before any of them even saw him. The man cut through Kuma's body, leaving a huge gash across the upper left half of him.

_"Shishi Sonson!"_ the crew was amazed that Zoro wasn't just able to handle Kuma's Ursus Shock, but he was also able to use such a powerful attack right after it.

The green haired man in the vision was panting hard and had blood dripping down his face. They turned to Kuma to see how he was faring and the others went wide-eyed. "Wait, this one was one of those robots too?!" Usopp shouted. Kuma had a huge gash in him, but it was on a metal sphere with wires coming out of it inside his shoulder.

"That can't be, he had a devil fruit power," Franky argued.

"Not true," Robin stated. "Although that definitely is the real Bartholomew Kuma, weapons can eat devil fruits. Remember the gun who ate the dog dog fruit and fought with Usopp and Chopper." She also remembered the elephant sword that Spandam owned but didn't want to say anything about it.

Past Zoro was as shocked as the rest of them were and he asked the Warlord, _"What the hell are you?! A cyborg, just like Franky? No, his body is even harder than steel!"_

The monster opened its mouth and a bright yellow light was building up in his throat. "Ahh!" Nami shouted as she was standing right where the beam exploded upon leaving Kuma's mouth. She wasn't hurt since it was a flashback, but she was still terrified as past Zoro barely evaded it and was thrown into the air.

"Are you going to tell him?" Robin asked Zoro as they were standing behind the main group.

"I've been trying, but it's too late now. I'll just let them all see for themselves," he responded to the black haired woman. He watched as his past self was crawling up to his feet and staring in awe at a steel bar that melted from Kuma's attack.

"Come on Zoro!" Usopp called out.

"You can do it!" Chopper cheered on the younger version of their friend.

"No," Zoro said as the memory version of him fell to his knees, "I couldn't." They looked at him in confusion. If he couldn't do it, then why weren't they killed? Why wasn't Luffy taken?

"Zoro, you said you wanted to say something earlier," Luffy said with an odd look in his eyes. The captain looked towards his first crew member who tssked under his breath.

"You'll see in a second," he growled and glared up at the sky. He could swear he heard the cackling of the little girl, finally able to make him angry instead of the other way around.

_"A cyborg? I guess I am. But I'm completely different from Cyborg Franky."_

"Not anymore," Franky flexed his super cool robot arms and posed as his new body was almost completely based off of Vegapunks' early plans for the Government weapons. "Now I'm way more SUPER than he is!"

_"I'm what is called a Pacifista. A human weapon from the government that is yet to be completed."_

_ "Pacifista?"_

_ "I was developed by the government's genius scientist: Dr. Vegapunk. He is the most brilliant person in the world."_

"What type of pirate lets themself get controlled by the government?" Sanji asked with a scowl.

"It's strange indeed," Robin agreed. "From what I know of Kuma's life before, he hated the government more than anyone." Kuma was still praising his creator in the background as Robin spoke, "Something must have happened to have changed him so much."

"Though he did save us all back in Sabaody," Chopper pointed out and they all frowned. Yes, the man had saved them from the Admiral, and the various other enemies, but the way that he did it still haunted some of them.

_"So he possesses such a body, and he's a devil's fruit user. I can't hope to beat that. And as expected, I can no longer move."_ Past Zoro was on his last legs.

"Zoro no!"

"Zoro aniki!"

"Shut up!" the swordsman yelled at the others. _How could I even think about explaining anything to them? They barge in at every other word!_

In the memory Zoro glanced over towards his captain before looking up at the man towering above him. _"Is there anything I can do to stop you from taking Luffy's head?"_

_"That's as far as I can negotiate."_ Kuma answered and stared at Zoro as he stood back on his feet. His panting was heavy but he slowed it down as his face became set.

"I'm confused," Luffy stated out of nowhere and the others looked at him. Most of the crew felt the same way, but they could see the looks on a few of the others' faces and they knew they were hiding something. "How'd you get out of this?" Nami and the others asked similar questions.

"He..." Brook started but closed his mouth fast when Sanji cast a glare in his direction. The skeleton kept his mouth shut as the others all turned to him but he started staring at the scene in front of them and everyone looked back as well.

_"I understand, then go ahead and take it..."_ Chopper and Nami were both opening their mouths to scream at Zoro for saying that when the man finished his sentence and dropped down to his hands and knees. _"But! Not his head! I beg you to take my life instead of his!"_ No one said a word as their mouths dropped. Seeing the proud swordsman prostrated in front of the enemy, begging, was too much for them. Adding on the fact that he was begging for the enemy to take his life, they couldn't believe their eyes.

_"I may not be as worthy as him yet, but,"_ he paused and no one could tear their eyes away from him. _"The head of the man who would one day become the strongest swordsman, isn't bad either."_

_ "Even with such an ambition, you'd sacrifice yourself for this man?"_

_ "The way I see it, this is the only way to help the crew. How can I protect my ambition when I can't even protect my Captain? Luffy's the man who will become the Pirate King!"_

Zoro stared into Kuma's eyes and there was a long pause as the larger man seemed to be pondering his enemy's offer.

"Zoro?" Chopper whispered with tears forming in his eyes.

"Don't be an idiot," Zoro scolded him while keeping his eyes on the scene in front. "I'm alive aren't I?"

"Oh yeah," Usopp said, snapping back from his daze and closing his mouth. "That was really cool, but it looks like he didn't accept huh? So how did Luffy..."

_"Hold it, hold it, you bastard!"_ the crew turned their gazes and gasped as they saw Zoro wasn't the only one to stay conscious after the blast. Sanji had one pant leg and one shirt sleeve torn off and he was limping his way over to where Zoro was kneeling in front of Kuma. The man had bruises and cuts all over his body and he was wobbling, but he managed to keep his footing as he walked over. _"What'll happen if you die? What about your ambition? Baka."_

The present-day Straw Hats couldn't believe what they were hearing as Sanji walked towards a stunned Zoro. Memory Zoro had blood running down the left side of his face and he stared at the chef with blood in his eyes.

_"You!"_ Zoro in the flashback was shocked by what Sanji seemed to be doing.

_"Hey big guy!"_

_ "Oi!"_ the green haired man tried to stop him.

"Sanji what are you..." Usopp began to say but past Sanji cut him off.

_"Forget about this marimo bastard. Take my life instead!"_ Now it was the crew's turn to look at their present blonde haired chef. Neither Sanji or Zoro looked at the rest of them, they stood on opposite sides of the group but were both focused completely on the scene in front of them. _"The Marines are still taking me lightly, but before long, the one who's bound to become the most dangerous person in this crew is... Me, Black-Leg Sanji."_

_"B-bastard," _memory Zoro whispered.

Franky was gawking at the memory cook who was trembling and looked like he could barely stand. He felt like making a joke about the man's ego, but he couldn't bring himself to open his mouth as he stared at them. He could feel himself about to start crying over their dedication, but he didn't want to be distracted from learning what really happened.

Nami looked away from the flashback and at the two men, turning her head back and forth as they each stared ahead. Kuma wasn't saying a word and it left a deathly silence over the battlefield.

"You guys shouldn't..." Luffy trailed off, knowing that he would have done the same for them. Even knowing that, his heart was beating faster and faster as he hoped Kuma would just ignore them and take him already.

_"What are you waiting for? Take my life, instead of his. I'm prepare to exchange my life for his!"_ Usopp and Chopper stared at the memory Sanji with scared eyes, hoping the monster wasn't going to kill him. They kept being reminded that Sanji was still alive by looking at the man next to them, but they couldn't believe it with what they were seeing.

_"The flower of my glorious death shall bloom on this spot. Oi, make sure to, say goodbye to everyone for me," _Sanji uttered while staring at Kuma. The words were meant for the man kneeling behind him and Zoro knew it as he lifted up a little.

"SANJI!" Chopper cried, tears starting to come down.

"Even at the end you were such a drama queen, swirly cook," Zoro commented while staring at the scene. The insult came out without him even thinking; he was so used to just saying anything bad about the cook to make him angry.

Instead of Sanji being the one to yell and get angry at Zoro, this time it was Usopp who glared at the swordsman. "He was sacrificing himself for you!" Chopper and Franky were also giving the swordsman nasty looks. Nami and Luffy were just watching the scene with huge eyes and open mouths.

"Yeah you could at least be a little grateful..." Usopp felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to see Sanji standing behind him. The chef shook his head and then looked over at Zoro who hadn't once turned away from the scene. He motioned back to it with his head and Usopp was shocked to see flashback Zoro moving even after all the injuries he sustained.

Past Sanji didn't see the man rising and spoke as if Zoro was still on the floor, _"Tell them I'm sorry, but they'll have to look for a new cook."_

Without any warning, the battered form of Zoro swung the hilt of his newest sword into Sanji's side. The already injured man bent at the side and coughed out some spit.

"What?!" Usopp shouted.

The chef turned and put a hand on Zoro's shoulder, looking into his eyes, _"Why you!"_ Sanji watched himself, the whole scenario feeling surreal. He didn't remember anything after this, but had heard a little about what had happened from the Risky Brothers working under Lola who claimed to have seen it all.

Past Sanji dropped down to his knees, the arm he had on Zoro's shoulder sliding down his left arm and then dropping with the rest of his body. Sanji became just a curled up form on the ground like the rest of the Straw Hats.

_"That's my last request,"_ Zoro continued as if Sanji had never shown up in the first place. The man pulled his swords off of his waist and threw them in front of Kuma, before tossing the one he had knocked Sanji out with as well.

"Zoro I'm sorry!" Chopper shouted at the man as he tried to take back everything he said a few seconds ago. Now he didn't mind that Zoro insulted Sanji, he'd saved his life instead.

Everyone held their breaths as Kuma took a deep breath. They didn't know what he was going to say but they assumed he had to decline since Zoro was still there. _"If I were to claim Strawhat's life after this, I'd be ashamed."_

_"I'm in your debt."_

"Wait, so he isn't going to kill Luffy? He didn't kill you though," Nami said while looking over towards Zoro. She thought again about how badly injured the man was when he got to Sabaody, and she realized that his injuries as they were now, were severe, but not enough to make him act the way he did on the next island.

"It wasn't from lack of trying," Zoro said in a low voice that made every single one of them wince.

_"Trust me in what I'm about to do."_ Kuma stated as he bent down to pick up Luffy's body. Even if Zoro didn't trust him, there was nothing he could do in the condition he was in. _"I'll keep my promise no matter what. But in exchange I will make you... Experience Hell itself."_

Everyone stared with wide eyes as the man held Luffy with his left and pressed his right paw pad against the teen's chest. Luffy squirmed in the Warlord's arms as a small red bubble was being pushed out of his back. The bubble looked a lot like the compressed ball of air that Kuma shot off earlier, only it had a blood colored tint and was much, much larger than the final compressed ball.

"It's huge!" Franky gaped at the huge bubble that was in the shape of a bear's paw.

"That was inside me?" Luffy said with a gasp.

_"What I just extracted from his body is his pain and fatigue. All the damage he accumulated during his battle with Moria is within this. If you really intend to take his place, then you must literally share his suffering."_

"Wait," Luffy started as he looked at the see-through ball of red. "Is that why I was all healed when I woke up?"

"Yeah!" Chopper suddenly remembered, "Luffy had no injuries after the battles. Kuma really took them all away?" Then he slowly recalled the injuries Zoro sustained that lasted him weeks after and he realized what was about to happen. "It can't be..."

_"Adding such damage to your current condition will eliminate your chances of survival. It will be certain death. See for yourself,_ Kuma swiped his hand through the ball and a small orb of red started floating towards Zoro. The man stood still as the sphere was about to hit him, staring at it as it pressed against his shirt and merged into his chest.

"AHHHH!" most of the crew members screamed at the sudden convulsion of Zoro's body. His skin was being pulled like Luffy's, stretched out and clumped as it looked like something was inside of him trying to get out. His whole torso was ripped back and forth.

_"Aruggghhghguuu!"_ Zoro's scream of pain made some of them feel sick to their stomachs. He tilted his head back and roared in agony, grinding his teeth together as his body kept shaking. _"Agghhhghg!"_ the pounding of whatever was under Zoro's skin stopped and the man dropped forward onto his face.

"Zoro!" Luffy shouted.

The present version of the man could do nothing but sigh as he looked around at the other members of the crew. They didn't even seem to realize that he was still there and were all panicking as Zoro lay on the ground. He was surprised to see even Sanji, Robin, and Brook were staring with dropped jaws as well.

"I thought you saw this," he said to Brook and the others turned to him.

"It's still painful to watch a second time," the skeleton replied with a ghastly look on his face. The others looked over to where they'd past by Brook earlier and could see the skeleton had his head lifted up slightly from where he was lying, his whole body shaking in fear.

"I never actually saw it," Robin told him and the others looked at her now. "I was out cold like the rest of the crew. I only knew what happened, not that it was..." she stopped as there was no way to describe the horror that Zoro was going through here. "Not that I heard any, details."

The man pushed himself on his back and was panting hard from all his shouting, trying to regain his breath. His mouth was wide open and he sprawled his arms and legs out to either side with his eyes rolled back into his head.

_"Still up to it?"_ they heard Kuma say and gazed back at the rest of the red ball of pain. Now that they saw what a small fraction of it could do, imagining what the entire paw pad would do to Zoro made them all wince. The man felt weird seeing every one of his nakama staring at him with such fear.

"Don't do it," Luffy whispered.

"I survived didn't I?" the man growled at all of them but they just kept watching.

As future Zoro spoke, his past self talked at the same time, _"Please,"_ he curled his hands into fists, _let me, do this somewhere else!"_

"What, why?" Nami asked their version of Zoro as they watched him stand up.

_"As you wish,"_ Kuma started walking after Zoro, the large ball of pain following them as well.

"Where are you going?" Franky asked.

"I passed out here so I do not know what happened either," Brook commented. Neither Sanji nor Robin knew what happened next, but from what they just saw, they figured Zoro must have found a way out of taking in the entire ball.

"That thing will kill you, you know that right?" Chopper asked, hoping Zoro didn't try taking in too much of it.

"Zoro," Luffy whispered. The man turned to his captain who was wearing his Straw Hat down over his eyes. "Did you take it all?" The man made eye contact with Luffy as the captain looked up at him. No words were spoken between them as they stared at each other, but they didn't need to.

Everyone understood what his silence meant and stared back at the scene unfolding around them. The two pirates stopped walking just outside of the ruins of the mansion, the huge ball of red stopping right in front of past Zoro. Nami asked again, while looking right into Zoro's eyes, "Why did you go over here to do it?"

"I didn't want to get blood all over you guys," the swordsman snapped at her and then calmed down instantly when he saw the look of horror on her face.

Kuma stood behind him and then disappeared, showing up on top of a high point of the mansion. The Warlord didn't say anything to the swordsman, but there was nothing left for Zoro to do. The man wasn't going to try and run, he just stared at the red ball floating in front of him and breathed deeply over and over again.

"Thinking your last thoughts?" Robin whispered to him and the man paused before nodding.

"I was apologizing to Kuina," he stated just as quietly so that only she could hear him. "Turned out I didn't need to." She stared at him for a few more seconds before turning to where everyone else was already watching.

Zoro could hear his crew members' staggered breathing as they were so nervous watching him. He felt a different presence and looked up at the sky. The swordsman could almost feel the girl staring at the memory with the same look on her face as his crew, only with less worry. They were all anticipating something and finally flashback Zoro's face hardened and he shoved his arms into the sphere of red until they were engulfed up to his shoulders.

_"Raaaaa!"_ Zoro roared as he shoved his arms inside the red ball. The sun was rising around them, and light shimmered all over the woods they were outside of. The man stood in a clearing between the rubble of the battlefield, and the start of Thriller Bark's forest.

The roar of dedication quickly changed to one of struggling pain, to one of agony, and finally into a bloodcurdling cry louder than anything they'd ever heard. He screamed in such a loud voice that it started to crack, his voice too hurt to stay it's normal pitch and going all over the place. _"AHHHHEEIEYYHGRAAARRRRROUGGGGGRR!"_

The Straw Hats covered their ears from the sound that was hurting their ear drums and their hearts. The few that kept their eyes open felt themselves physically and mentally in pain from watching Zoro's body.

Unlike the last time where something was crashing back and forth inside his body making his skin fly out and back in, this time the crashes inside of him were breaking through the skin. Huge gushes of blood were spouting from his arms, his legs, every inch of his body.

"Oh god, I think I'm gonna be sick again," Usopp opened his eyes for a second and then had to turn around to make sure he didn't hurl. Franky was sobbing and hugging his arms across his chest as he wailed.

Robin had her hands in front of her mouth and stared ahead with a trembling look. Nami was curled up in a ball on the floor like Chopper and they were clenching their eyes shut while holding their ears and shaking back and forth. If this was happening to anyone else they all would have been having similar reactions, but the fact that it was their friend who had to go through all this made it ten times worse.

Zoro stopped trying to calm them down and just stared at his body. He didn't know what was happening to him all this time, he just kept thinking about his promise with Kuina, how she wouldn't accept an excuse no matter how good. _No matter the reason. __It still would have been an excuse nonetheless._ He had to stay alive.

The body kept absorbing more of the ball of red and the crew started to see that it was definitely shrinking as it got pulled into Zoro. His mouth was still open but he couldn't make any sound as only a little air was escaping from his lungs that were getting ravaged by the pain inside of him.

"All that damage," Sanji muttered as his cigarette dropped out of his mouth. He was watching with a straight face until Zoro's skull began seeping blood and his eyes spewed blood, making it look as if they had popped.

Luffy couldn't tear his eyes away, no matter how much he wanted to. "This is all my pain? I never had to feel all this, that Kuma guy was lying!"

"It is more likely that he condensed it all, just like with the air bomb before. He could have made a much larger paw pad with your pain, but in the size it was in, the pain was much sharper than you originally felt it." Robin tried to explain as Zoro gave no answer.

"_UUURGRGHHehhhh,"_ Zoro screamed again after being able to take in a small amount of breath but it didn't last as his voice gave out again. His legs spewed blood, one rip of his skin tearing completely through his left pant leg. They watched as a liter of blood flew through their bodies and splashed on the rocks behind them.

Nami couldn't keep her eyes clenched shut any longer and stared at the floor. It calmed her down until the gray stone beneath her started to get red. A puddle of blood was seeping towards her and suddenly a splash of blood from Zoro's body went right through her face and she fell backwards. The image of Bellemere's blood spewing from her front and back as the bullet went through her flashed in Nami's when she closed her eyes, and when she opened them all she could see was her friend screaming bloody murder while getting torn apart.

"Almost there," Sanji mumbled as the ball was two thirds of the way finished.

"Didn't you ever become numb?" Robin asked but the man's blank reaction showed her that no, he had felt every second of that pain. "Oh," she whispered.

The ball started sucking into Zoro's body faster and he wasn't expecting the sharper intake of pain. The man got his breath caught in his throat and his body spasmed as he opened and closed his mouth without taking any breath. The ones still watching saw blood seeping out of his mouth and his teeth were all soaked red.

Chopper looked up for a second and wished he hadn't but he couldn't turn away. "You lost so much blood! You should be dead!"

The ball finally vanished into his hands and Zoro kept staring up at the sky with his mouth wide open, no sound able to come out. His chest and back were still convulsing as rips continued to pull at him. The tearing of his own body started to calm down and the crew members who haven't been hearing any noise started to open their eyes and turn back.

Brook pulled his bony fingers out of his eye sockets and the first thing he realized was that there was blood everywhere. Blood was dripping down Zoro's body: it was in his hair, soaking his clothes, all over the rocks and grass. The liquid had shot in every direction leaving a huge area of red ground around his body.

The man's arms began shaking after a few seconds and they lifted up to his chest. Memory Zoro crossed his arms and brought his legs together as his head was still pointed towards the sky. His mouth started to close after that and his head lowered until it was pointed straight ahead and everyone could see his eyes.

Usopp stumbled backwards and fell to the ground as he saw the animalistic look on the swordsman's face. "H-H-How did y-you survive that?!" the sniper shouted in terror. Zoro's bleeding eyes were bloodshot and he looked ahead as if there was the most evil enemy standing in front of him.

The ground of the memory began to shake and it started tearing apart. Unlike most of the prior times however, a large memory like this didn't become too violent. The walls didn't tremble and collapse, they just started to rip apart as the blue sky faded into blackness.

"Y-You!" the shrill voice sounded from up in the sky. "You're a monster! How are you alive?"

"Hahaha," Zoro was looking down and he started to raise his head until his eye was pointed directly at the spot he knew the young girl was watching from. The low tone and evil eyes he used as he laughed scared half the crew shitless and made the girl's voice whimper from up in the sky, "If you think I'm a monster now, just wait until I get my hands on you."

"Zoro," the man stopped threatening the little girl and turned his head to where Luffy was standing, his hat behind his head. The string around his neck kept it from falling but his hair was still enough to cast a shadow over his eyes. "You, saved my..."

"Luffy," the captain froze mid-sentence and remembered that he wasn't going to thank the man before. That was before he saw how much pain the other man went through though, what he was willing to do. "Drop it."

The Straw Hat captain stared at his first crew member for a few more seconds and then smiled, "Yosh!" He looked around at all the tear-streaked faces and at his scared nakama. "Let's get out of here!"

"Just like that?" Chopper asked, sniffling to pull back any more tears from falling. Nami was on the ground still, reminded too much of Bellemere by Zoro's actions for his captain. Franky had stopped his crying but had a pained look on his face as he imagined Tom's body with a harpoon from his own boat sticking out of it. Robin looked back at the cabin and despite the smile on his face, she saw that he was having an internal battle right now about what Zoro had done for him. Luffy looked to be hiding what he really wanted to say, like at any moment he could snap and scream at his friend for doing that for him.

Wisps started moving around the crew like a tornado. "I won't let you!" The shrill voice of the young girl sounded over the darkness and the crew stopped moving to look up in the air. Her voice sounded like it was coming from all sides, "I've been trying hard to break your walls. There are two of you in particular who I've been having trouble with. Each time I find a strong memory from you and try to pull it out, your mind fights me and holds it in."

"We're stronger than you think!" Usopp shouted.

"You aren't one of those two people long-nose," the girl taunted and he shut up.

"Robin, wings!" Luffy shouted and he started running forwards before jumping in the air. The woman started running with a smile as she crossed her arms, calling out her technique.

Arms formed on her back and folded into wings as she lifted up in the air and Luffy landed down on her, wrapping his arms around her front. Sanji's eyes went wide as he saw the way his captain was riding on Robin but he didn't seem to notice. Robin knew how innocent her captain could be so she didn't scold him for his choice of hand position, but she still couldn't stop her cheeks from flushing red as the other crew members dropped their jaws.

The two of them flew higher until they were farther than the other members could see. The wisps around them were being smashed to bits as they pushed through.

Suddenly a voice sounded out as a whisper and they were the only two that could hear it as it came from right above them. "Funny, the two I've been having such a problem with were you two. You really helped me out by moving around and getting closer to me. Couldn't risk going down there, you two are dumber than you look! Hehehe!" Robin kept flying higher, feeling unnerved by what the girl said but trying hard to focus and not fall like last time.

In the total time of one second, two large images appeared in front of Robin and Luffy. The woman didn't fall immediately but she was frozen to the spot in midair that she was flying. Luffy's arms lost their grip around the woman and he started to slide off of her body.

Each of them stared as their bodies began to lose altitude, the images burning into their minds. "NOO!" Robin shrieked and Luffy was staring so hard at the huge image of his brother with a molten fist through his chest that he hadn't even noticed the other picture. There was a huge twisted vision that showed a face only it was completely blue and white.

He realized that whoever it was was frozen solid and he remembered how terrified Robin was of Aokigi when they first met him. The woman had yet to turn from her own image but her wings vanished and she started plummeting head first towards the ground below.

Luffy was falling also and he extended an arm over to Robin. The woman's face was blank and her arms and legs were limp as she fell out of the air. Even if the ground was soft, if she landed on one of her limbs like that, it was going to hurt. The boy pulled her in until his arms were wrapped around her again and he was falling with his back pointed at the ground.

"Move out of the way!" he shouted but there was no need as Sanji jumped up in the air and caught the two of them, landing to the ground softer than they were falling. Luffy was holding Robin close and he rested her down on the ground, the woman snapping back to herself and clutching the sides of her head with her hands.

"Ahh!" the little girl's voice screamed. "How are you doing that?! You shouldn't be able to close me out from your memories!"

"It's because," Robin whispered as she stood up, "they aren't memories I wish to remember!" She trembled as she kept her mind on Ace's image in the sky before. Her mind was working subconsciously to lock up her memories from the invader because if she tried to do it herself, that would require thinking about it.

"Ace," Luffy whispered. He looked up in the sky but the image was far gone now.

"This will keep you occupied until I can break through your pathetic walls," the girl with pink hair sneered.

Wisps of memories all around the room started forging together until voices could be heard as well. "Quickly, we need to try again before it forms!" Nami shouted.

"It's too late," Zoro said as the black sky above them started to get more defined.

_"Monster!"_

_ "Hahahaha!"_

The crew heard the shouts of 'monster' and they all looked over at Chopper who was fearing what this memory would bring. The laughter belonged to a man that many of them remembered with strong dislike.

"Is that Wapol?" Nami asked as she heard the voice and looked around for its source. The different wisps started morphing, they were all different parts of Chopper's memories but started changing until they all showed the same thing.

The group found the walls close in on them and they were standing on a wooden floor. There were beakers and test tubes around the desks, as well as books stacked all around the room. "Doctor's house," Chopper whispered as he stared at the medicine lining the shelves.

"You mean Doctor Hiluluk?" Sanji asked. The reindeer looked up at him and nodded. Sanji and Nami made eye contact, having heard Chopper's story from the crazy woman in the castle. "Is that him?" Sanji asked and it made Chopper freeze where he was standing.

"D-d-doctor?" he realized that he was going to be able to see the Doctor for the first time in so many years. He started turning and saw the top of Hiluluk's head poking out from behind an overturned table. The man had a gun pointed at the door and they all looked over as it was creaking open.

"Ah, Chopper! What happened to you?" Nami shouted in a concerned tone. The reindeer was limping badly and had bruises and cuts all over his body. He was missing one of his antlers but he had a small smile on his face.

"Chopper-san!" Brook yelled.

_"Doctor, I'm sorry. Your favorite book, I lost it."_

_ "What happened to you?"_ the man in the vision seemed taken aback by Chopper's condition and he lowered his gun.

_"This mushroom. It's medicine."_

_ "That's an Amiudake!"_ the man dropped his gun to the floor and started walking towards the little reindeer with the red hat and blue backpack. _"You got that for me?"_

_"Stay alive. Stay alive, Doctor. I want to be a doctor. Teach me to be a doctor like you,"_ Chopper's voice was higher than normal and he sounded very young in the memory. _"I can fight too. Just like a pirate. I don't know if a reindeer can do it."_

Chopper ducked his battered and bruised head but the Doctor grabbed him and pulled him in with tears in his eyes. _"You can! You can! You're gonna be a great doctor!"_

"Aww, Chopper that's so sweet," Usopp said with a smile.

"WOW! You went through a lot to get that!" Franky added with a pose.

Luffy looked over and smiled at the doctor but Chopper's face was dark and he was glaring at the ground.

_"You've got such a kind heart. You idiot!"_ the way the man shouted it it sounded loving but it made the present version of Chopper have a very different reaction to his past counterpart.

"End it! End it NOW!" Chopper turned into his Heavy Point and charged at the Doctor and him but he went right through them and they started reforming right away out of the wisps.

"I don't get it Chopper-san, what's wrong?" Brook asked and the memory started to change around them. The walls stayed the same but the Doctor and his apprentice disappeared, reappearing on the other side of the room.

"Amiudake," Robin said out loud since Chopper had dropped back down to his normal form and was staring at the ground, "is a type of mushroom that only grows in specific areas of cold climate islands." She paused and then continued in a grave voice, "It's highly poisonous."

_"The Amiudake soup, is it good?"_ the crew just finished listening to Robin when they heard Chopper's young voice again and looked over to the bed on the side of the room. The Doctor was drinking a soup that Chopper had made him with the mushroom in it and everyone stared speechless.

_"Kah! Tastes like crap!"_

_ "Eh?!"_

_ "Nothing alive could stand eating this!"_

_ "Oh..."_

_ "Don't look so depressed! Miracle medicine is supposed to taste bad. That proves it's working. Thank you, Chopper."_

The memory started to fade fast and the crew looked over at their small doctor. The only things in it that changed were the Doctor and Chopper again, but now the reindeer was lying in bed and the Doctor was on his way out the door. It looked like it had been a while because Chopper was now all bandaged up.

_"Remember, while I'm out, you stay put and sleep."_

_ "I got it."_

_ "See ya."_ The doctor closed the door and their Chopper reached out to him but there was nothing he could do. The memory version of him started laughing happily and the door flew back open, _"You're gonna be a great doctor. I guarentee it."_

"Wow, he really believed in..."

"Shut up!" their doctor shouted at Franky while spinning around. "I killed him!" Everyone stayed silent as the reindeer transformed to Heavy Point and started punching the floor hard.

The memory started changing again but they were still inside Hiluluk's house. _"Where's Hiluluk?!"_ Doctorine pushed the door open and shouted.

"Whoa it's the old hag?" Franky asked and both Sanji and Luffy winced, remembering what happened when they called her that.

"Doctorine," Chopper whispered as he looked at the woman again. His past version was sprinting around the room in fear.

_"You don't have to run! I already know about you! Where the hell is that damned quack?!"_

_ "Doctor got better and went to the village."_

_ "'Got better?' He couldn't have gotten better. There is no modern medicine that could cure him."_

_ "That's not true, look at this!"_ Memory Chopper pulled out half of the mushroom he still had, _"He ate this so he's all better!"_

_"That's an Amiudake!"_ the woman gasped, knowing what the fungus meant.

_"It's a panacea! So everything's okay! Doctor said even his strength returned. Doctor said I could become a doctor so-"_

The woman in the doorway charged and punched the little reindeer across the face. "Hey!" Luffy shouted.

"I deserved it!" Chopper shouted as he buried his head in his knees.

_"What was that-"_ he wasn't able to finish his sentence as the woman picked him up and threw him into a wall face-first.

_"You stupid reindeer! That mushroom, that mushroom... It's a deadly poison. Once consumed, the victim won't live half a day."_

"Doctor was already dying," Chopper started as he lifted his head and got to his feet. "He would have been gone soon anyway, but he would have lived a little longer if I, had I not," Tony stared at his past self who was in complete disbelief.

_"That can't be, I looked it up in the book. I lost the book, but that mushroom can cure any illness!" _He seemed sure of himself, _"On the picture of the Amiudake there was a skull and crossbones! Doctor said he'd gotten better. He's not going to die! You're a LIAR!"_

The memory started to break apart and the crew couldn't stand to see Chopper the way he was right now. He was breathing hard and staring at the strong woman in front of him as she cried softly. His past version was angry, but unable to stop listening to the woman in his house.

_"He was happy that you cared so much for him,_" the walls started to crack and books started being ripped apart on their shelves. The cabinets started imploding inwards as the ceiling began to shatter. _"The skull mark in the book means it's poison."_

_ "That's a lie!"_

_ "It's not a lie! Now you listen to me. There is no medicine in this world that can cure every disease, that's why we have doctors."_

_ "It's a lie,"_ although he said it, it didn't look like past Chopper even believed himself anymore.

_"Now listen to me, you can't save a person's life with kindness alone. If you want to save a life, you have to have years of medical knowledge and practice! You'll never save anyone with just brute force!"_ Both Doctorine and Chopper were crying now and the windows to the house started exploding outwards as the tables and chairs shriveled up into wisps and flew away.

"Aaahhhhaaaahh!" Memory Chopper tilted his bandaged head up and yelled at the ceiling in regret. His tears reminded Franky of his own anger and the cyborg started over to the doctor. Their version of Chopper tried to hold back his own tears but was failing miserably and although he wasn't wailing like his past self, he was sniffling loudly to keep snot from going into his mouth.

_"He decided to make that castle his grave,"_ Doctorine's words rang out while the last of the memory tore apart around them.

The crew of the Straw Hats stared at Chopper with pity, hurt that he had to go through this again. "Even if it was your mushroom that killed him," Robin started and the reindeer turned to her with big eyes, "He really did believe that you would be a great doctor."

"Yeah, he did!" Usopp agreed as he ran over to his friend and gave him a hug.

The little reindeer sniffled and then started, "I-It wasn't the mushroom that killed doctor." The others were surprised by this, "Although it did speed up his death, it wasn't what," he didn't want to finish his sentence and just watched as the wisps started to twirl again.

"Oohoo, so you want to watch that memory next?" a high pitched voice called out and Chopper twitched knowing what she meant.

"Please stop!" he shouted but the wisps of the memory were spreading across the sky and they realized they were standing outside. The walls were becoming distant and looked off of the side of a mountain. There was snow everywhere, on the ground, falling from the sky.

They looked ahead as Chopper jumped from one of the chains leading up Drum Mountain. He landed on the top of the lift and looked ahead at the Doctor who was sitting on the ground in front of a small army all holding guns. He looked relieved that the Doctor wasn't dead yet and took a step forwards before freezing in his spot. They could all hear Hiluluk's words even from that distance.

_"A monster will be coming here soon. He's my son. Don't touch him."_ The man held up a cup in the air and shouted, _"This has truly been a wonderful life! Thank you, Chopper!"_ a huge explosion rocked the top of the mountain from exactly where Hiluluk was sitting a second before.

"What?!" Luffy shouted as the ground moved and he lost his balance. Some of the others felt the shaking as well and realized that Chopper's memory involved the shaking of his vision as well. Everything started to get blurry as they all focused on one thing that wasn't blurred like the rest. A black top hat was falling out of the sky and dropped right in front of the scarred reindeer.

Flashback Chopper started sniffling as he stared at the hat in disbelief. The one that wasn't a part of the memory tried not to watch, but he ended up opening his eyes at the last second and watching his father explode for the second time in his life.

_"Hahaha! He blew himself up! What a hippo!"_ the others turned their heads over to where they heard the voice coming from and Franky looked pissed.

"Who said that? I'll kick his ass!"

"It was Wapol, and don't worry, Luffy already did," Nami said with hate in her voice.

"Ch-Chopper?" Usopp asked as he looked back at the former version of the reindeer doctor. Even in his normal small point, his face looked terrifying as he trembled in anger. The vision was getting louder and louder, with a low violent hum in the background. The snow around them started to tint red along with the sky and everything else in the memory.

Suddenly Chopper's eyes went red and a huge bulge of muscle appeared on his right shoulder before spreading to his back. _"ROOAARRR!"_ A huge blast of muscle formed on his left shoulder and it tore his bandages to shreds so they could all see his second eye completely red as well.

Nami and Usopp stumbled backwards before falling down in absolute terror. Brook shrieked and everyone except for Chopper stared in shock at the memory reindeer as it twisted and morphed into something horrible. His midsection stayed small as his shoulders buffed up and his opened his jaw so wide that they could all see his teeth growing longer and sharper.

_"RARRRR!"_ he kept getting taller and his stomach turned into a defined six pack of abs as well as his chest becoming very muscular. He pulled his arms down to his side and roared again as he charged with bloodlust all over his face.

"I've never seen you like this before," Robin said, being the first to regain her composure after seeing the horrifying version of Chopper's Heavy Point.

_"WHAT IS THAT?!"_

_"MONSTER!"_

_ "SHOOT IT!"_

A man in front of them transformed into a zoan type animal but they couldn't really see Dalton all too well. Everything in Chopper's vision was tinted red and blurry leaving the memory for them to watch a mess. It started to destroy itself in scattered pieces around the memory.

"What's happening?" Sanji asked as he looked around at the broken shards of the mountain that were floating around him. Even Dalton and Chopper began to break as they had a conversation where the words were too jumbled for them to understand either.

It finally seemed like the girl stopped trying to hold the broken memory together and allowed it to die out. The blackness returned around them and instantly every one of the crew members looked to their doctor and started encouraging him.

"You're a great doctor."

"He would be proud of you."

"Wow, you can really be scary when you want to," Zoro received a punch on the head from Nami for this and he turned and glared at her. She was about to scold him but when she looked at his face she saw him screaming in pain as blood poured down his hair and eyes.

She closed her mouth and stared into Zoro's eye and he felt odd considering he thought she was going to yell at him. "Hey!" he growled but she just kept looking at him and then closed her eyes tight and looked back over at Chopper. The little reindeer was smiling as Luffy and Usopp sat next to him trying to cheer him up. She smiled and felt like going over as well, but as she looked at him, she saw his eyes glow red and his fur puffed out as he transformed into the half-monster he was at before that horrified her so much.

Nami felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see the man she was just staring at. He saw her trembling and put a hand there just because it felt right, but he had no idea how much safer it made her feel as tears began falling from her eyes.

_We need to get out of here,_ Zoro thought as the usually strong independent woman was sobbing on his arm. He looked over at Franky to ask him something but the man was staring off into the distance with a pained look on his face as if he wanted to scream as loud as he could. _This is taking its toll on everyone._

**A/N Hope you enjoyed. I just got back from a ski trip this weekend and put in some revisions before posting. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and I'll try to post another chapter tomorrow. **

Black Night Wolf

Oh interesting so you're going to do thriller bark next I wonder how the crew will react to that. Well anyway thanks for updating again ;).

**Yup, pretty horrifying if it was too bad for the anime to even show the scene. Hope you liked it.**

Dark D Phoenix

please update again soon, you are a very good writer. :33

**Thank you very much.**

Okami1001

oooh next chapter is going to be intense...looking forward to it also are the they going to see Luffy's memory of Shanks' losing his arm? because that's one i've been looking forward to too.

**I'm... glad you mentioned that! Looked back at the rest of the story and that was really a great one that I left out, so expect it to come up soon as I add it in!**

kagga111

hi, i just want to say that your story is AWESOME !

**And your review is AWESOME!**

GR

wwoa, the Thriller Bark scene is one of the most 2 things to see here aside from the Baron

**Baron?! Crap! Thank you all for reminding me of these things and I'm thinking I may need to add an entire extra chapter to this. Haha.**

RedZoro

Noooooo! Why did you finish at that moment ! I want to read more XD.

**Sorry to leave you hanging over the weekend, but glad you want to read it so bad!**

usagi

Chopper and zoro *_* funny XD it was just a feeling and these two are my favorite crew members ;) evil chliffhanger i want luffys reaction when he watches zoro sacrificing himself... waiting for more :)  
Usagi

**I know a lot of people think Luffy would overreact to something like that, but he and Zoro are very similar in a lot of ways. Sanji knew that Zoro wouldn't have wanted them all to know what happened because he didn't do it for thanks, and Luffy knows the same thing... even if he can't accept it.**

Guest

I want more memories of Luffy.

**Don't worry, there will be some next chapter! Thanks again to everyone who read and reviewed and I'll see you soon!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5:**

"Everyone," Chopper whispered. Then he smiled through his tears and started laughing at the faces Luffy and Usopp were making.

"Lalala! Don't cheer up too fast!" The enemy with short pink hair made her face appear in the sky. It was huge and despite the attacks many of them shot at her, nothing had any affect. "It won't work!" her face appeared to the right side of them in the dark. She popped up on every side and on the ceiling until there were five of her.

Usopp and Chopper were scared so they pointed their eyes at the floor. That was the wrong decision as the girl's evil smirk appeared in the dark abyss. "EEYYOOOOWWW!" The long-nosed sniper jumped out of his shoes and into the sky as he found his feet in the center of the girl's mouth.

The faces around them started laughing and the large mouth beneath them snickered, "I broke through! I broke through!"

"What?!" Robin shouted and she tensed up. The others hadn't seen her this freaked out since Spandam suggested they use a Buster Call back on Enies Lobby.

"It's okay Robin-san," Brook started and he laughed, "Yohohoho, there's only a one in nine chance that-"

"No," Luffy stated and gained everyone's attention, "it's either me or Robin." He looked over at the thirty year old who was usually so composed in front of them. She could take the darkest situations and make them into jokes, so the fact that she was trembling in fear made the captain hurt for her. "I hope it's mine."

"How do you know?" Sanji asked and Luffy explained to them what the enemy girl had said to them up in the sky.

"Oh," Nami whispered and looked to her left as the black wall was being filled with an expanding memory. She didn't know what they were about to see, but her own memory was painful to watch and she kept it hidden far down. For his to be deeper she wondered what the little brat was about to show them.

The vision in front of the navigator started to solidify and her mouth lowered as the first thing she saw was a giant green foot. The foot wasn't connected to the huge green form that was collapsed in front of her.

"What the..." Zoro muttered as he watched Hawk Eyes run past him and slice through a group of ten men running away behind him.

_"Run!"_

_"Get back to the bay!"_

"Where is this?" Brook asked confused as he looked around with empty eye sockets.

There were Marine officers all over the place. The pirates that were running away were being cut up by the Navy soldiers and had to turn around and fight them back. People were dying all over the place and it scared some of the crew who had never seen so many people dying in the same place.

Usopp was staring in fear as Admiral Kizaru shot across the sky and slammed into a larger than normal person who blocked with their arms using Haki. The Admiral opened up his hand and a thin beam of light shot out and through the man's forehead.

"The War of the Best," Robin whispered as she looked around. Her mind strayed from her fear of reliving her past and she focused on the scene above her. She looked up at the sky and saw cannonballs falling all over the solid ground they were standing on.

"Ace," the crew heard Zoro and turned their heads to where a man wearing red held up a fist. The fist glowed red and was pouring out magma as it got larger and larger

_"Whitebeard will die a loser! A fitting end for a little fish in a big pond!"_

_ "Shut up! Whitbeard is the great pirate who created this era!"_ Ace shouted with rage on his face as he charged at the enemy.

"Akainu," Luffy growled, grinding his teeth together. The crew hadn't heard him use that voice for a long time. It was filled with absolute hatred beyond his usual need to just kick his ass. Luffy remembered this all too clearly, he'd replayed the moment in his head for over two years.

"The Admiral?" Usopp asked nervously and stared back at the man with the lava fist.

Chopper was staring at his captain in shock. Past Luffy was covered in so many injuries and his skin looked pale. Just one look at the teenager let the doctor know that he was on the brink of collapse.

_"Don't make fun of the man who saved my life!"_ Flames engulfed the young man and he roared in anger as he pulled back his fist. _"The name of this era is "Whitebeard!"_

They could all guess what memory this was going to be and they turned to see a memory version of Luffy shouting at his brother for him to stop and run like the rest of them. Akainu and Ace each brought back their fists and then released towards each other, their hands colliding in midair.

The ground behind each man started exploding backwards, rocks tearing out of the ground and flying away. Ace roared at him as they pushed for dominance but it was clear Akainu was winning, _"Whitebeard, and you fools who call him your father, share the same fate as losers!"_

The magma overpowered the fire and exploded towards Ace. He was thrown back with such intense force that he tumbled across the ground after landing.

_"Ace got burned!"_ a man holding two pistols shouted from close to them.

"Akainu huh?" Zoro stared at the admiral, wondering if he'd be able to take him on as he was now. Back then he wouldn't have stood a fighting chance, but now, "Hmm."

_"You were overconfident since you ate a Logia, the most powerful of the Devil Fruits. But you are only fire. I am magma, that which will burn even flames! There is an enormous gap between your strength and mine!"_ As the Admiral was shouting, Chopper saw memory Luffy try to take a step forward and call his brother's name. He wound up falling to his hands and knees.

"Luffy!" Usopp cried.

"What's wrong?" Nami asked.

_"Oi Luffy-kun! You've reached your limit!"_ the others looked up and were greeted with a familiar face.

"Jimbei!" they shouted with mixed emotions. Some of them were excited to see the fishman again, while others were still remembering Nami's memories too vividly. Sanji growled but saw Nami was one of the ones smiling at the man and lightened up a little.

A small piece of white paper fell from Luffy's hat and dropped to the floor in front of him. "Ace's Vivre card?" Robin asked and the past version of Luffy confirmed her thoughts as he reached out for it. The piece of paper started sliding away from him in the direction of his brother and he just missed it with his hand.

_"The Pirate King- Gold Roger. Dragon the Revolutionary. These two men's sons being step-brothers is quite a frightening thought."_ Everyone in the memory and in the Straw Hats looked up at Akainu as he spoke. _"Your fate has been decided. Regardless of who else gets away, I swear to never let you two escape!"_

"Whoa," Franky muttered at the man's statement. Luffy was in the middle of Marineford and he was now the target of perhaps the strongest man there, surrounded by Marines. He had no idea how his captain was able to get out of this one.

The admiral looked down at Ace with a scowl, _"Now take a good look..."_

_"Wait! LUFFY!"_ the crew stared wide-eyed at their captain who looked so much like he did in the memories of him as a child. He was reaching for the Vivre card on the ground and looked up just in time for his heart to skip a beat and for him to stop breathing.

"LUFFY!" the Straw Hats screamed. The captain with the large 'X'-shaped scar on his chest stared ahead in fury and screamed at the top of his lungs in fury.

The crew stopped panicking and stared straight ahead in complete shock. They knew Ace died in the war, but like this? Their captain's brother jumped between Luffy and Akainu's fist, the Marine's hand going through the Whitebeard mark on Ace's back.

Past Luffy was staring up at his brother with a confused look on his face. The older boy coughed up blood as he looked down at his kid brother. He had a red bead necklace on and it was shattered by the punch, little pieces of it bouncing all over the ground.

Robin pried her eyes away from it for a second and looked down at the slip of white paper on the ground. It was slowly shriveling up and burning to a crisp.

Everyone knew what was coming. None of them wanted to believe it, but all they could do was watch, there was no helping Ace now.

"Why didn't he turn into fire?" Chopper asked quietly as they all stared at the fist through Ace's chest.

"If he had," Zoro started with a great deal of respect towards this man, "it would have hit Luffy."

_First Zoro then Ace._ Luffy looked down, his hair shadowing his eyes, _I wish I was stronger back then. Thank you Rayleigh,_ he stiffened up and looked back at the memory. His eyes were filling with water as were the others. Even though Brook and Franky never met him, they were shouting his name and crying with Chopper and Usopp.

_"Ace!"_

_ "ACE!"_ the crew looked around and saw that everyone around them had pretty much stopped fighting. All the Marines and pirates were staring at Akainu as he held his molten fist inside of Luffy's brother. Jimbei stood next to Ivankov who they all knew now from Zoro's memory. Whitebeard's commanders were all standing next to each other as they stared at their comrade.

His body was still on fire as he stood there in front of his brother. Finally Akainu pulled his huge fist out from inside Ace and they all could see his insides were on fire as well. Inside of the flames they could clearly see the blood covering the wound and some could even see out the other side where the Marine Admiral was now standing.

_"A-Ace," _Luffy whispered, his mouth wide open as he looked at his brother and closest friend since childhood. The twenty year old in front of memory Luffy coughed up a bucketfull of blood and started to stagger on his feet. _"ACE!"_ their flashback captain seemed to realize what was going on and he ran forwards right in front of his brother.

The horde of pirates who were running away cursed and screamed as they changed directions and ran back to fight the admiral. Rockets and bullets started flying from every direction and slamming into the large powerful man towering above the two pirate brothers.

Flames towered high above all the explosions and everyone was watching to see if it did the trick. They all dropped their jaws as the man in the red suit just started walking out of the flames, a huge hole in his right side bigger than the one inside of Ace. His entire arm was gone as he walked out of the explosion and towards the enemy.

_"It can't be, he's a monster!"_ the pirates around were shouting similar things as the man regrew his torso and his arm before stopping in place. He was right behind the still-standing body of Ace and Luffy was looking at the man over his brother's shoulders with intense fear on his face.

Brook glanced over at their present version of Luffy who was still glaring at Akainu with a ferocious tenacity. However, his eyes kept shooting to his brother before he had to tear them away again.

_"Looks like there's still a bit of life in you. Fire-Fist Ace."_ Akainu raised his fist.

_"Stop it! STOP IT!"_ the crew heard Luffy shout but they heard a more menacing voice and turned to see a huge figure standing with a large white coat and a huge spear with a curved blade at the end.

_"ACE!" _the man brought back his fist from that distance and they all recognized the face from the papers.

"It's Whitebeard!" Chopper and Usopp cried out together, feeling intimidated even by the memory version of the man. His mustache reminded Chopper of Hiluluk and the reindeer froze up, seeing the doctor die in front of him again. He shook his head and closed his eyes as he dropped down to his knees.

Suddenly a yellow beam of light shot through Whitebeard's fist before he could finish whatever attack he was planning. They looked over and saw the Admiral they had to fight on Sabaody, Kizaru. The man seemed amazed he was able to hit the Emperor with his attack.

Just as the fist covered in molten rock was coming down on Luffy and Ace, a large figure jumped between them with crossed arms.

_"JIMBEI!"_ Luffy screamed as the magma went flying in all directions but missing its intended mark.

_"I will not let you, hurt him any more!"_ the fishman yelled with his hands pressing against Akainu's fists.

Sanji took back everything he thought about the fishman from this one act alone. He just saved their captain's life, and it wasn't the first time, or the last. The admiral was yelling at Jimbei to move but the fishman would not falter.

_"If letting my body burn away will buy us some time, then I don't mind!"_ the former Warlord shouted at the admiral who was yelling that Jimbei knew how powerful he was. _"I've already accepted my death!"_

"Jimbei-san!" Brook gasped.

A huge explosion rocked the area as the two pressed harder into each other.

"Ah! What's he doing here?" Nami shouted and pointed over at a man lying on the ground. A few of the others gasped as they looked at the man with a number three as his hairstyle. He was looking worn out and badly beaten.

"Mr. 3?" Zoro asked feeling confused. "Didn't he get arrested with the rest of Baroque Works back in Alabasta?"

"Yeah," Luffy stated for the first time in a while. His voice was a relief to the crew who didn't know how he was feeling, "We're friends now." Nami and Zoro looked like they wanted to argue after being almost killed by the man once. "He escaped with me from Impel Down. Bon-chan was there too," Luffy finished and his face became even darker.

A few of the others didn't catch on to the grim look on Luffy's face. "Mr. 2!" Usopp shouted.

"Where is he?! I'll never forget how he saved us from the Marines by sacrificing himself," as the words left Chopper's mouth, he regretted saying them as Luffy winced.

"He did the same thing in Impel Down. We were escaping together, but he stayed behind to open the Gates of Justice and then close them so the warships wouldn't be able to follow us out." Luffy stopped and stared at his brother, he gazed at Zoro in the corner of his eye as well and was feeling horribe, "He died."

Sanji dropped the new cigarette from his mouth. He had wanted to meet the Okama again, maybe the only one of his kind that he did. The man, or woman, fought him in Alabasta and then he saved their lives. He always believed he would see him again, but now he guessed he never would.

After hearing about Bon-Chan, Usopp and Chopper started crying harder than they were just from watching Ace. It was hard watching this, but much worse knowing they had let their captain go through it all alone.

Two figures jumped over Jimbei as Akainu was about to attack him again and they sliced through his left shoulder. One man had blue and yellow flaming wings and the other was holding two swords.

"Marco the Phoenix," Robin muttered in awe at a rare Mythical Zoan fruit user.

"Who's that?" Zoro asked about the swordsman in the black hat.

"I believe it's the fifth commander of Whitebeard's pirates, Flower Vista." Robin stated.

Luffy pulled his eyes away from his brother and looked over at the man, "Oh yeah, he's the one who saved me from Hawk-Eyes. He was really strong."

"Eh?" Zoro asked, intrigued more than he was by Akainu. They were all trying to focus on something other than the dying man in front of them, but it was hard when their eyes kept snapping back no matter what they talked about. _Wonder how I'd do against him?_ _Nitoryu huh? He'll be a good warm-up before I take on Hawk-Eye._

_"You're Haki users?"_ Akainu asked even though his wound was healing itself. It looked like the other two men were just too tired or that the Admiral was just too strong for them to hurt. _"Can't you see that it's too late for Fire Fist? Take a good look!"_

Everyone in the Straw Hats were already looking at Ace as they listened to the admiral, but as Ace fell to his knees they knew it was close to time.

Memory Luffy had a hand under his brother's arm and another around his back. They saw where his right hand was, and it wasn't touching any skin. Their captain had his hand right over the huge gaping wound in Ace's back that was spilling blood.

_"Ace, hey. Hey can you hear me? You'll be fine, right?"_ the younger captain lifted up his hand with his head over Ace's shoulder and he saw it covered in blood.

Nami put her hands over her mouth and felt like hugging her captain, _Not only did he die in front of him, but in his arms. His hands are soaked in his brother's blood, and Ace jumped in to save him. He must be thinking it's all his fau... it's just like Bellemere. She sacrificed herself for us, but we would have lived if she didn't, we would have escaped to the sea on our own. With Luffy, he knows that his brother had literally traded his life for his younger brother's._

_"Ace, we have to hurry and treat your wounds,"_ Memory Luffy said with intense fear on his face. Chopper took one look at the wound and shook his head, tears falling from his eyes again as the nice gentleman he met in the desert kingdom was dying in front of him. His tears were more so for his captain who must have been hurting, and be hurting right now.

_"I'm sorry Luffy. Just for me, you did all that crazy stuff. But I still couldn't be saved, I'm so sorry."_

_"What are you saying? Don't be ridiculous! Someone help him! Ace, Ace, please save Ace!"_

A doctor who looked like he knew Ace started running towards them with a first-aid kit in his hand. Luffy showed him the wound and just like Chopper, he had the same look on his face as he saw the hole in the commander's back.

Past Luffy didn't like the face the doctor was making and started yelling at the man to save Ace already. _"Forgive me,"_ the man said as he stood back away from the wound, his head falling in shame.

_"What do you mean? What are you saying, do something! You're a doctor aren't you..."_ Luffy kept shouting at the man until his brother started speaking again. Although he looked like he was whispering, the voice echoed off the walls of the battlefield. Some of the crew members looked towards the present version of their captain who was trembling, his hair shadowing his face so they couldn't see his eyes. The one thing they were able to see though, was his mouth twisted into a snarl and his teeth bared, grinding against each other.

All the other sounds seemed to become a quiet hum in the background, _"It's no use. He fried my insides. I won't, last much longer. I can tell, my life is at an end."_

Nobody in the present-day Straw Hats spoke and they all felt awkward having to watch this memory. Just like Zoro's earlier, it happened after the crew had banded together, which meant that they were all around. The guilt pressed on them for not being strong enough to stop Kuma from doing what he did to Zoro, and for not being powerful enough to follow their captain into the war.

_"Don't say that. Oh, I know, Iva-chan! Hey please,"_ he called over to the Okama queen with the large purple hair. Emporio Ivankov looked pained, and the revolutionary stared at Luffy in pity as the boy begged him to save his brother. Zoro thought about the man's weird power that had saved Kuina and himself earlier but there was no way something as bad as this could be healed that easily. _"Please, please, give Ace some of it, give him some! Please! I'm begging you! Ple..."_

_"Straw Hat boy!"_ Ivankov looked pained to say it, but he couldn't sugarcoat his words, _"Ace boy is beyond saving."_

_"That can't be,"_ Luffy turned back to his brother in his arms, _"didn't you promise me? You, said you'd never die, didn't you? ACE!"_

The crew all remembered watching Ace's promise as soon as they were entrapped inside the dark realm and were suddenly wondering whether or not things had been planned out this way from the start.

"Luffy-san," Brook started but Zoro held up an arm and the skeleton was quiet. Nobody said a word and they all just watched in respectful silence as the man who had saved their captain was dying.

_"Ace. What are you saying? What do you mean you won't last? You promised me, you said you'd never die! Didn't you Ace?!"_ The crew stared at the older man's reaction as he stared over his brother's shoulder and into the distance.

The voice coming from Luffy's brother was loud and vibrated off of the walls of the memory. Everything around them became blurrier except for the two boys on their knees in the middle of the warzone.

_"Was it good that I was born?"_ Ace asked and everyone stayed silent although their eyes opened up a little. Robin felt her heart skip a beat and she looked up, having asked herself the same question for decades until she met Luffy.

_"Nobody, wanted me to be born. I probably wouldn't have even wanted to live, if it weren't for the whole deal with Sabo, and having an unruly brother like you."_

"Why wouldn't he have wanted to be born?" Franky asked. He felt guilty for what happened to Tom, but never that far.

"Imagine how it would feel," Robin started as she looked ahead, her eyes shadowed by darkness. "Your father being hated by almost every person in the world. The child of such a man would be shunned from birth. They would kill him if they ever found out who he was, and nobody would want him." Luffy turned to the woman who was shaking as she spoke, wondering how she knew all that. His dark face stayed hidden as he turned back and stared at himself, so angry at how weak he was right here.

_"Oh right, if you ever, see Dadan. Give her my regards. For some reason, now that I know I'm going to die, even her name sounds touching to me."_

Past Luffy wasn't having any of this death talk, _"I keep telling you. Don't die Ace!"_

_ "I only have, one regret,"_ Ace's breathing was slowing down as everything except for the two boys in the memory seemed to fade to white around them. It was as if the only thing from this memory that Luffy's mind registered, even then, was him and Ace. _"That I couldn't see you, fulfill your dream. But, I'm sure, you can make it. You're my little brother. On that day,"_ each of them stopped speaking but the two of them looked like they knew what he was referring to. _"Just like... we promised on that day... The way I lived my life, I have no regrets about it."_

_"That's not true! Don't lie to me!"_

_ "I'm not lying. What I truly wanted, wasn't fame or anything like that after all. Was it... Good that I was born?"_ The others stared at him in disbelief except for Luffy and Robin, _"What I wanted was just the answer to that question."_

The memory version of Luffy looked shocked as he held his brother close to him. Ace kept speaking and it only got louder to the crew even though his words seemed like the memory was different than they were remembering. _"I, can't speak loud enough for the others to hear it. Please pass on, what I'm about to say."_

"Ahh!" Luffy suddenly shouted and the crew turned to him. He had been calm this whole time as he watched his own painful memory, but something hit him. "I forgot!" More like he had buried this part of the memory so far down that he never thought about it and completely forgot about telling Ace's crew his message.

"Don't worry," Nami said trying to calm him down. "Whitebeard's pirates are still in the New World somewhere, we'll see them one of these days."

Ace's message started, _"Old man, everyone, and you Luffy. Even though, I'm so worthless. Even though, I carry the blood of a demon."_ Robin put her hands over her mouth and stared at Ace with tears coming down her face, _"Thank you, for loving me!"_ A smile formed on Fire Fist's face as his tears began to fill up the corners of his eyes.

His arm that was wrapped around Luffy's back to hold him up, started to slip off. He fell forwards and Luffy realized halfway as he turned and stared at his brother drop. Everything started to move in slow-motion as he fell face-first towards the floor.

The past version of the Straw Hat captain stared at his brother's head as it dropped on the ground and blood splattered around it. Ace was lying without moving at all in a puddle of his own blood. "AHHHH!" Luffy shouted, unable to handle the memory.

"Calm down," Sanji urged but Luffy kept screaming and started using a Gum Gum Gattling Gun at the sky of the memory.

Flashback Luffy was having a much different experience as he had no energy left at all. _"Ace," _the boy whispered and Chopper turned away, hurting to see his captain in such a feeble state.

The other commanders and pirates of Whitebeard's forces were all staring in shock at the man they had come to save.

_"Ace,"_ the Luffy in the memory tried again. The present version of him was panting hard with his arms finally back at his side and he lifted his head up to the sky, "ACEEEE!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

The memory version couldn't take it any longer. His hands were shaking out in front of him, covered in his brother's blood as he started to whimper. Boogers and tears started coming out of his nose and eyes as he tilted his head up to the sky. He looked like he was trying so hard but finally his mouth opened, _"Ahh ahahah, AHHHahahah! AHHHhhghgh!"_

The pirates were starting to go nuts as they had to listen to Luffy's screams on both sides. One was of angry rage and the other filled with more pain and sadness than they could handle. Most of their memories had been when they were young children, but this was recent and Luffy was still in this much pain because of it.

"Make it stop," Chopper tried pulling his blue hat over his eyes as he cried on the ground.

Zoro looked around and realized the little girl's statement before might not have been far from the truth. _'I'm going to wait until you go mad, then I'll release you into the world.' She's doing it. Everyone is on their last leg,_ he looked at Nami who was trembling as she looked at Ace's body. Their doctor was on the ground sobbing and he could see a few others looked hurt as well.

_"This can't be!"_

_ "Ace,"_ the pirates started crying loudly and shouting their fallen comrade's name.

When the crew looked back up and realized the memory hadn't ended yet, they saw Luffy sitting with his head still tilted back. His jaw was so far unhinged that he must've been using his Devil Fruit's power subconsciously to stretch his lips that far apart. _"Ahhahaha! AHHahah!" _The sobs stopped and his eyes rolled back into his head.

Luffy looked to be choking as he stopped crying and started screaming up at the sky, his yells getting louder and louder. It was so hard to watch that only Sanji, Zoro, and Robin were able to keep their eyes on their past captain as he screamed. The present version of Luffy looked back for a second and saw his brother's body before dropping to his knees.

Suddenly is memory self stopped making any noise and Sanji gasped. Robin and Zoro looked at their captain in fear as he seemed to break, his whole body freezing up. This was a new look for Luffy, as he had gone beyond helpless to a point where they couldn't even tell he was still conscious.

All of a sudden a huge wave of magma started rolling across the ground towards the two of them. Luffy didn't even notice him but the one called Marco flew forwards as his body was engulfed in blue flames, "I won't let you kill him!" The man growled it in a voice that even made the admiral pull his head back a little.

Everything was blurry as Marco continued screaming. Jimbei grabbed Luffy and started running with him as the first commander shouted, _"The fight, isn't over yet. Get Ace's brother out of here Jimbei! Straw Hats survival was Ace's final wish! We will absolutely protect him in Ace's place. If we let him die, it will be the Whitebeard Pirates' greatest shame!"_

The present version of Luffy was staring shocked at all the pirates who started roaring in anger and determination. Their faces looked scary as they glared around at the Marines around them that would try to get in Jimbei's way. The fishman just kept running without stop, ignoring the battle around him while solely trying to save Luffy's life. He didn't remember too much of this, it all seemed like a blur after Ace... died.

"So this is what you meant when you said Jimbei saved you?" Usopp asked, finally looking back at the memory instead of the floor. The floor was littered with blood and bodies so it wasn't a much better place to look as the memory was getting pulled with them. They didn't have to move, but they were sliding across the battlefield as if they were running the same speed as the fishman.

"No," Luffy responded. "He saved my life after we got out of here too. Him and Tra-guy." The pirate looked back at Akainu as he charged his former self. Everyone was scared that the admiral was going to catch up to them, but their breaths were caught in their throats as the Marines shouted to their leader.

The man froze in his tracks, a shadow appearing over him. He was twice as tall as normal people, but the man behind him towered over twice as big as him. The top of Akainu's head only went about halfway up the large man's body and he started to turn around slowly, a look of shock and fear spread across his face. He was face to waist with the strongest man in the world who slammed the butt of his sword on the ground, shaking the ground.

All of the Straw Hats were looking forward now and had lumps in their throats. The presence of the man, even inside the memory gave them chills. Even Whitebeard's own pirates seemed to be a little scared of the old man with the look he had on his face.

The memory around them was starting to break, the sky was tearing apart slowly and they looked over to see if anything was happening to their captain. He was making the same face as before and it just seemed like his deepest memories were too scattered to remember anything else. He didn't even remember seeing all this.

What was still visible was the looming form of Whitebeard. His darkened body looked terrifying as he glared down with eyes that could give weaker men heart attacks. His eyes looked black from where they were standing and they opened wide, his veins popping as he pulled back a fist and it started to glow white.

"UrrraarrRRR!" Whitebeard let his arm fly and he smashed it down on the side of Akainu's head. The Straw Hats were stunned. Every one of the pirates who went up against the admiral were tossed aside like nothing. Even Marco and Jimbei could only hold him for a few seconds. It was like nothing they'd ever witnessed. Akainu's head pretty much flattened on contact with the white sphere around Whitebeard's left fist. His upper body was flattened against the ground and either side of the floor he hit broke.

They were in the center of the battlefield and no one was around them as they were all blasted back by the force of the punch. Chopper, Usopp, Franky, Sanji, and Brook all held their mouths open so wide their jaws looked similar to the memory Luffy's. Akainu was pushed farther and farther into the ground as the crater underneath him spread out. They were all trembling at the sheer power of the Emperor's wrath.

_"The old man is pissed!"_

_ "Everyone get away from here!"_ the pirates were running from their own captain as he leapt up in the air above Akainu. The admiral was still okay enough to see Whitebeard's foot glow white and start coming back down towards him.

"The Tremor-Tremor fruit," Sanji whispered having read about it when he was a kid. "It's one of the strongest in existence."

Akainu rolled out of the way just in time and dodged another attack as the old man swiped down with his sword and shattered the ground beneath it. The man in red thought he could fight back and started shooting fists of magma at the man but he just walked right through the lava explosions and started fist fighting with Akainu. The admiral didn't last five seconds before Whitebeard pummelled him into the distance as he rolled, creating a huge dust path in his wake.

"Whoa, I really don't remember this," Luffy whispered and looked back over his shoulder to where his brother was lying on the ground. The puddle around him seemed to be a little wider than before and it made him wince and continue to stare at it before he spun back around at the sound of his nakama's gasps.

It looked like the old man was about to finish off the bleeding admiral, but Akainu shouted, _"Dark Dog!" _His fist pounded straight through Whitebeard's stomach and stopped inside him. It didn't look so bad until the admiral continued to shoot out tons of magma inside of Whitebeard, frying his insides.

"No!" Usopp shouted, rooting for the old man. The other guy had just killed Ace and was going after their captain so he wanted the man stopped no matter what. He wanted him to feel horrible pain.

Robin was looking back at her fleeing captain and saw that even though he didn't have the strength to scream anymore, he was still feeling all the pain of his brother's death. The others were all still focused on Whitebeard, especially Luffy who wanted anything to distract him from staring at his brother's lifeless body.

_"This is the end for you."_ The Marine stated with a confident look as Whitebeard fell to a knee.

"After an attack like that, this must have been when Whitebeard died," Nami said and the others seemed to agree. Only a few of them who had read the paper over and over again knew that this wasn't the case.

"No, Blackbeard still hasn't showed up yet," Zoro said and Robin nodded.

Sanji added, "Oh yeah, I forgot he showed up at the end of the war."

"Blackbeard?" Chopper asked angrily, the man who ravaged his home country being blamed for killing Ace's captain.

To prove Nami wrong, Whitebeard's hand shot out and grabbed Akainu by the collar. All the Whitebeard pirates shouting to their captain who they thought had died stopped and Akainu looked the most shocked of all.

Zoro looked up in anger as some of the broken memory pieces started pushing back together. It seemed like the little girl was trying hard to keep the memory alive as every time one of the crew members looked over at their broken captain or his dead brother, it made them feel horrible.

"How can he move with his insides full of magma?!" Chopper shouted. Everything he'd learned about medicine told him the man should be dead by now. Flames burst out of Whitebeard's stomach and cast a shadow over his face that made the admiral in his left hand gulp and become unable to move out of terror.

He threw Akainu's body high up in the air and twisted his body to the right as his left hand started to glow white again. The man fell from the air until he was right in front of the pirate captain. Whitebeard brought his fist back across his body and it slammed into Akainu's side with so much force that the air around them shattered like glass.

Huge cracks formed all over the sky around the impact and Akainu's body even seemed to break apart by how powerful it was. Blood spurted out of the man's mouth and his body was being ripped up, but that wasn't the end of the attack. It was so powerful that the ground underneath the Straw Hats, who were pretty far away back near Luffy and Jimbei, started to crack and shatter.

"What's happening?!" Usopp yelled.

"Wow! Super!" Franky saw the cracks in the air break off into many smaller branches until one touched the ground. Instantly a huge fissure shot across the entire battlefield and hundreds of Marines started falling into the seemingly endless crevice. Huge cracks went different directions away from Whitebeard, one heading into the town and continuing to move up the hill as it destroyed every house in its wake.

Nami's mouth was stuck wide open as the enormous fortress with the word, 'Justice' written on it started to crack up the middle and the entire building started to crumble. Even with all the damage he had taken, this _one_ attack was tearing the entire island apart. The ground started lifting up and moving down at different parts. Soldiers tried to escape from one area just to have a different area lift up and drop on them.

The Navy Headquarters was getting torn to shreds and they watched as Akainu's body slid down a rock and fell into one of the fissures in the ground in front of them. Even some of the pirates were getting pulled into the crack as well and as Zoro looked off to the side his eyes went wide. The water on the sea was lifting up in different locations as if the ground they were on was changing its elevation. _This is the power of the strongest man in the world._

Whitebeard's attack didn't just destroy everything in the memory, it was shattering the memory itself. They knew that it was probably the girl just losing control of Luffy's lost memories, but it seemed like Whitebeard was destroying their world.

The walls of broken castle and plaza started to break apart and the sky above them ripped to shreds as well. Even though Whitebeard's attack was over, the memory for them kept breaking apart and it was so violent that it seemed like it was the old man's attack that was causing it.

The last thing they saw before the memory was destroyed for good, was the pirate captain swinging his sword and knocking a hundred Marines into the distance with his one strike. Then they were back to darkness and everyone looked around at each other before realizing they were holding in their breath and finally let it out.

There was an eerie silence in the group for a few seconds before Nami turned to her captain, "Luffy?" She didn't know what to say to him, it was hard for _her_ to watch, and that was only after knowing Ace for a short time. This was his brother who had seen his brother die, in his arms!

"I'm sorry," Zoro apologized to his captain. Luffy turned to him with a confused look, "I should have been there. You needed our help, and..."

"I don't want _you_ apologizing to me," Luffy scolded his nakama with a hurt look. He was replaying his brother's actions in his head alongside Zoro's and it pained him to look at the swordsman, "You did enough."

"I'm sorry," Chopper called out, not having a memory that Luffy could look back on and forgive him for. There were tears in his eyes as he apologized for not being there for the captain. The rest of the crew started shouting out similar things and although Luffy was getting angry at them, his heart felt warm.

"Stop," he ordered them and the area became silent, "We'll talk about this once we get out of here." Some of the others gulped down their tears and nodded at him, "Until then let's just focus on beating this girl!"

"I'm glad you were all so focused on that last memory," a shrill voice shouted and they all looked around to try and find the source but she sounded more confident than ever before. "You dropped your guards since you were so focused on it," Robin gasped and tried to block out anyone from invading her mind. "Ooh, too late, _demon child,_" the girl cackled and the others turned to Robin having heard the nickname used before.

Never before had they seen it get to her as bad as it did now. The fact that the little girl was laughing and calling her out meant that she had broken through the woman's walls. "No!" She yelled, her own thoughts betraying her as she knew what she was about to see.

**A/N Hi everyone. I know there was only one memory in this chapter, but it was a long one so I decided to end it here. There was originally only one in the next chapter too, but thanks to a few review suggestions, I'm gonna try to extend it a little. Hope you all enjoyed and leave reviews telling me what you think!**

RedZoro

Pleeeeaaaaaase update soon!

I was crying during this chapter, really !

**Sorry, but not really XD! Glad I can cast the "feels" on my readers.**

AskoII

Aw I wanted it to never end! Another great chapter, well done. Ooh, I want also to see the baron!

**I'm going to add him in to the next one since I'm getting a lot of requests for him. Thanks again!**

usagi

**Thanks for the review that I moderated and hasn't shown up yet while I write these replies... oops. Anyway here's the shoutout and I'm glad you understand why Luffy got why Zoro did it, but he still won't be able to just forget it like that, which is why it reappears late in this chapter.**

Kurogitsune Yue

Watching these scenes in the anime wasn't really hard, wasn't hard indeed... But reading it in detail just made me cry! Uuuu... _ Can't wait for the next chapter, this story is awesome! Hope to see Luffy's memory next XD

**Thanks so much for saying it made you feel more than in the anime. I love to hear reviews like that and it keeps me wanting to write and update as often as I can. Glad you were looking for a Luffy memory cuz that's what I had. Thank you all again for reviewing, and see you soon!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6:**

"Robin calm down," Nami pleaded but the woman was crossing her arms over her chest and was breathing deeply.

_I never wanted them to see any of this!_ Fire appeared in front of Robin's eyes and she winced before letting out another yelp as she saw her mother's face again. "Stop it!" she whispered, calming down but still trembling.

"Stop? But I haven't even started yet," the girl cracked up at herself and then the wisps floating around started to get bigger. They each formed together into larger images, each of which was recognizable and they all had a little girl with black hair somewhere inside it.

One of the images showed Robin as a teenager, probably around fifteen or sixteen. "Let's start here," the little girl laughed like a maniac and the memory started spreading out, pushing other memories out of the way as it grew and wrapped around them all.

"Wait! Please, I'll do anything! Just stop," the woman begged at the sky. The image of the fifteen year old version of her started spreading wider and wrapped around them. One part of the wall had yet to become part of the memory and Nami and Franky saw it before the larger memory took them over.

Both of them stared at the little girl standing on top of a rock. She was looking ahead as flames rose up in every direction. The entire island she was standing on was covered in fire and there wasn't a person around her. She looked younger than most of them in their flashbacks and she was just staring out as the flames grew larger and then the memory was gone, in it's place were a bunch of wooden planks.

When they looked around, they realized they were in a boat's cabin of some sort. Nico Robin was sitting on a chair at a desk and had her hands cuffed behind her back. She looked terrified as she looked around for an exit, but there was only one door and voices were heard behind it.

There was a bed against the back wall on the other side of the desk and a picture frame in the cabin that showed a man holding a gold brick. His facial expression made it seem like that was his biggest accomplishment.

"Where is this Robin-san?" Brook asked and turned his head.

He wished he hadn't as she grabbed her right arm with her left hand and squeezed as hard as she could. It looked like she was in pain, but it distracted her for a split second. "Robin, what's wrong?" Luffy asked. Even though he had just witnessed his brother die again, he was still worried about the grown woman more than himself.

She shook her head with clenched eyes and they all looked ahead as they saw the door open. It creaked slowly as a man walked in and he was the same one as the one in the picture on the wall.

_"How do you like those handcuffs?" _the man asked with a smirk. He had a black pirate hat with a skull and crossbones on it, but his discerning feature was his green hair and sharp green beard that stuck off of his chin.

"What happened to him?" Usopp asked. The man had bandages wrapped around one leg and his right shoulder. There were gauze pads taped on his forehead and cheek as well and it looked like they were just in a battle.

_"Found them on the Government ship,"_ the man stated and his smirk started to distort into an angry frown. _"I was wondering why a large World Government ship like that would come after a pirate with a mere twelve million bounty. Truth is no one on our crew has a Devil Fruit power, so why would they need Sea Stone? Unless someone was hiding who they really were."_

_"Captain Her..."_

_"Shut up!" _the man slapped her across the face in her seat. Sanji roared in anger but there was nothing he could do while this was just a memory.

"If I ever find that guy I'm going to kick his..."

"He's dead," Robin stated coldly and she glared ahead at the man's figure as she clenched her arm. Franky felt like asking how, but from the look in the woman's eyes, he already knew the answer to that question and took a step away from the her.

_"You know what I found on one of the dead bodies of those agents?"_ the man reached into his orange, button-down jacket's pocket. He pulled out a crumpled ball of paper and unfolded it for her to see. _"A wanted poster, of a young girl. Her name, Nico Robin. Now Nicole, tell me the truth, before I shoot you."_

_ "Yes," _the young teenager admitted, _"That's me."_

_ "The Devil's Child,"_ the man laughed and for the first time, the crew noticed there was something off about his eyes, something that made their skin crawl. _"You know we lost eight good men in that battle. All because you decided to hop on board our ship. You know, I bet if I gave you to the Government, they'd remove my bounty altogether!"_

_ "Please, no," _Robin begged.

Sanji and Brook were staring at the younger version of Robin and saw the woman was developing very well already. She was wearing a purple sleeveless dress that was completely bland except for how worn out it was. Her figure was small and thin, but curvy at the hips and the chest.

_"You know, the rest of the crew is begging me to turn you over. We'll get the reward money, seventy-nine million beri! Woo, we'd be rich!"_

_ "Please," _the girl begged, tears in her eyes. Present day Robin felt her heart wrench and she looked away from her teenage self.

The girl in the image stopped crying suddenly, her eyes going blank. Every member of the crew noticed it, how she was thinking about something and it was ripping away at her mind. Young Robin's face set and she slowly turned her lips into a smile. _"Don't turn me in. Please, I'll do __**anything**__."_ The smile on Robin's fifteen year old face looked devious and suddenly Nami dropped her mouth slowly and turned to the older woman who was clenching her arm tight.

The man looked down at her and Sanji noticed he was giving her a similar look that he himself was a few seconds ago. The chef started to see something more though and his eyes bugged out as he turned around fast. He saw Nami standing at Robin's side and hugging her with both arms and his mind went blank with rage and confusion.

_"__**Anything**__?"_ the man repeated what the girl on the seat said. Franky, Brook, and Zoro all froze where they were and understood where this was going. _"Hmm, sounds,"_ the man saw the girl in front of him stand up and take a step towards him with a toothy grin, _"interesting."_ The man finished his sentence and reached forward grabbing Robin roughly by the arms and pulling her towards him.

Usopp's eyes went wide as he realized what was going on and every one of the eight Straw Hats besides Robin took a deep breath in as the man pressed his lips to hers. Her hands were still cuffed behind her back and she couldn't move as the man kissed her again and then lifted her up and tossed her across the room to the bed on the other side.

"W-What's going on?" Luffy asked, his innocent behavior not needed at this point. Chopper also seemed confused and was staring ahead with eyes that couldn't understand what they were seeing.

"You..." Zoro started and turned but the woman behind him was clenching her eyes shut as tight as she could and shivering in place. Nico Robin never wanted to remember this, she wanted to keep it locked away forever.

Nami remembered how some of the pirates she'd infiltrated to steal from had hit on her and how she'd always rejected them. None of them had ever taken her by force, and she was afraid as she stared at the man walking towards the bed. He removed his jacket from his arms leaving his chest and back bare, bandages lining his skin from the battle he was just in.

From where they were standing in the room, they could see the man's face as he stepped closer to the bed and started removing his pants. His eyes were twisted like something had snapped in his mind after losing his crewmates. "I can't take it anymore!" Sanji screamed and ran forwards, kicking the memory captain over and over but the wisps were barely phased as they kept reforming. His eyes bugged as Robin's dress was torn off with one swipe of the man's hand as he got on the bed with her.

Suddenly everything got very blurry and Robin looked up from where her head was buried in her own chest and she saw that the room had become nothing but a blur. There were two blurry figures moving around in fast motion in front of them on the bed and although they couldn't see or hear anything specific, the outlines of the blur were enough to make some of them feel sickened to the stomach.

After about thirty seconds of the horrendous fast-motion flashback they couldn't take it anymore. "Hey, HEY!" Luffy shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Sorry," the little girl's voice called out. It was the first time she apologized and some of them thought that even that was too far for her. They were wrong, "I didn't want to watch that bit, too grown up for me," she giggled. "But I know I got the point across, hehehe," her laughter echoed as the fast moving blurs slowed down and the room stopped shaking.

The memory seemed to shift a little as it wasn't coming back into focus right after the blur, but skipping a little forwards.

When the memory came back into focus, everyone stared in complete shock at Robin. She was standing in the center of the room, completely naked. Her skin was splashed with blood and they saw the captain who was just with her up against the wall with his neck ripped open and arms sticking out of his throat.

Then the flashback collapsed around them, everything turning red and tinting their vision. Before they knew it, they weren't in the room any longer and the walls had changed from wood to a blue sky. The crew looked up and realized they were out of the cabin before looking down at the trembling memory. The blue sky was covered in red and none of them could see clearly like the whole memory was tinted like this.

A few of them didn't know what to make of the scene in front of them as it shook like an earthquake. There was a little girl in front of them, but they couldn't tell that she was even Robin since her skin, eyes, and hair were covered in red. On every side of them were bodies of men wearing black suits and raggy clothing. There was a government ship next to them and it looked like they were all just killed.

Teenage Nico Robin walked over to the side of the ship without looking at any of the bodies and she started untying a life boat. The whole time, the flashback was shaking so hard that the crew could barely even see what was happening. All they knew was that someone had killed all those men, and it looked like it was her. Finally the memory wasn't sturdy enough to hold on and the walls, ground, and ceiling shattered all at once.

**A/N Sorry when I wrote this is got really bad really fast so I'm going to make a new story with same name, only it'll be rated M. If you feel like reading how this memory actually went down, then take a look.**

"I-" the woman started but Nami pulled her head into her body and held her tighter than ever before. Robin was stunned, she thought they would be shunning her after seeing something like that.

"Shh," Nami said, suddenly acting like the older woman. "You're okay, it's over."

"Hah! No it's not!" the shrill voice sounded and they all watched as the wisps from Robin's torn apart memory started pulling themselves back together. "That wasn't the end, that was just the tip of the iceberg!" Her cackles continued and everyone growled at the sky in fury, "I've been through her mind and you won't believe the amount of people who died because of this girl. Hehehehe!"

"I'M GOING TO KICK YOUR ASS!" Luffy screamed and half of his crew and the little girl all screamed back in fear. His yell, added with the look of rage in his eyes, made Usopp and Brook feel chills down their spines.

"Robin, did they all have to die?" Chopper asked in a scared voice up at the woman. He thought he'd asked pretty quietly but all of the crew members turned and looked at the woman who was standing straight up and watching as wisps resembling her flew around them like a tornado.

She shook her head, "No, I regret what I did there. It was," she couldn't think of how to explain what possessed her after being forced to have sex with the disgusting man just to survive. "They, he," she stuttered and her composure couldn't be regained as long as she knew they all saw her memory.

"Wow," Zoro said. The way he meant for his one word to sound was more of how impressed he was that she was able to take them all on when she was that young. He didn't know if he could have done the same thing when he was fifteen or sixteen years old.

Unfortunately, each crew member took it to mean something else. "I know right? That was really cold. I didn't know you did things like that," Usopp stated.

"There's things in all of our pasts that we'd rather leave forgotten," Zoro countered, seeing as his 'wow' was interpreted the wrong way. Although he said to leave it forgotten, they all had to watch it anyway and none of them were going to forget anytime soon.

"Zoro! She had to do that to survive! Would you have done anything different in her situation?" Nami scolded him and the man held up his arms as his one eye went wide. No one got what he was saying and he looked over to where Usopp and Chopper were arguing with Franky about what else she could have done.

"Escape would have been my choice," Usopp said and Nami laughed at him.

"Running away is your solution for everything!" she yelled at him.

"That's because of situations like these!" he yelled back, seriously disturbed by what he just watched. He threw up during Zoro's flashback of the village's slaughter and this reminded him of it exactly. "I'm not stupid enough to risk my life on something that's impossible to win with."

"More like you don't have the guts," Franky shouted at the sniper who was pissing him off.

"I don't have guts because I'm a skeleton. Yohohoho!" Brook tried to break the tension but everyone ignored him.

"Shut it Franky you're not helping my case by jumping in front of a train." Nami scolded the man and then felt bad about what she said immediately.

"If there was ever a battle that should not have been fought, it was definitely that one. You almost died," Sanji stated as he looked at the robot now. He understood why the man had done it, but that didn't make it any less stupid.

"At least I wasn't going to stab an old man for his food," Franky growled back at the chef and the two of them got in each other's faces. The wisps kept swirling around as the crew began fighting more and more, getting more personal with each second.

"Both of you stop it," Robin tried to say sternly but everyone ignored the murderer next to them. Nami released Robin to walk closer to Usopp, "Lying and running aren't the only two options for every situation."

"But running is sometimes a good idea," Chopper said. He remembered how mad he was at Wapol after Hiluluk was killed, but Dalton had convinced him not to do something stupid and try to fight. Running away from that battle hurt, but it kept him alive and without any regrets. Without thinking about the consequences, Chopper continued, "like if you and Nojiko had run..."

Even Usopp, who was arguing intensely with Nami, found Chopper's sentiment to be cruel even if the reindeer didn't realize it. He was right, and if they had run, even if Bellemere said she had children, she probably could have gotten away with it and lived if the kids were never found. Instead the two of them ran around the building and begged that their mother not die. As Nami thought about it she realized how she had chosen the worst possible decision and her mom might have still been alive if she didn't.

"At least I don't cry after losing a fight you stupid marimo!" Sanji shouted as Zoro tried to break them up, insulting the chef as he did. Zoro glared at him and reached for his swords as Sanji raised a leg.

_Wait a second, 'Once you start fighting amongst yourselves, that's when the real fun will begin.'_ Luffy suddenly remembered the girl saying this before as he looked around his crew. They were all fighting with each other and it was getting worse by the second. He looked at Robin who was standing away from the rest of them by a couple of yards and was just staring at the mass of people with a scared look.

The captain walked straight through them all. He walked between Sanji and Zoro who were fighting and stopped to watch their captain walk by. Luffy passed by Franky who was growling at a Heavy Point Chopper and both of them stopped. Brook stopped scolding Usopp while Nami looked up at her captain, the sad look on her face changing to confusion.

"Robin," he said as he reached the woman and she looked at her captain with a trembling look. "Don't worry. Nothing will change, you're still my nakama. You always will be." The look on her face started to change and her whole body stopped shaking as her mind began to calm down.

The others were still on edge but Luffy looked at them all with a scowl on his face, "Stop fighting. You're doing what she wants." Everyone froze where they were and realized what they must have looked like a few seconds ago. Shame filled most of them as they thought about some of the things they were saying to each other.

They started apologizing, (except for Zoro and Sanji who just turned their backs to each other and walked to a different part of the blackness), and Luffy grinned. The Straw Hats hated getting scolded by an idiot like him, but he always knew what to say at the right time.

"Thank you, Luffy," Robin said to her captain who turned back to face her.

Luffy wasn't sure what to say now, he wasn't used to having to deal with issues like that. Everyone tended to keep their personal stuff away from the adventures they had, but that was no longer an option. He scratched his neck and looked away before whispering in a quiet tone so that she would be the only one to hear him, "If you want to talk about it later, I'll listen." He normally couldn't care less about any of his friends' pasts, but she looked like she was holding it so far down that it was hurting her mentally.

She looked at him in surprise and then chuckled, "You always seem to know what people are thinking Luffy." The captain looked at her as she smiled and he felt good knowing that he had changed her mood.

"Rrrgg," they all heard a voice above them and looked around to see a memory forming. "Should have saved the trump card for the end. No matter, I'm sure I can gain a little more power with these next ones."

"Power?" Zoro asked with an angry glare at the sky.

"Your negative feelings," the girl giggled. They were suddenly feeling very unnerved at her laugh and she continued, "They give me strength as long as you're in here. So please, continue watching, continue getting hurt. When you've finally lost your minds, I'll let you go," her voice started to fade as the clippings of the memory came together. Before she finished speaking they all heard one more thing that made some of them flinch, "Then I'll kill you all."

Everyone was silent as a forest was forming around them and finally Usopp turned his head to Nami, "You just had to pick a fight with a little girl."

The wisps started wrapping around them again, speeding up the process of how long it took to form. It seemed she wasn't lying and the longer they were in there, the easier it was for her to gain power.

The memory didn't take long to appear, and the crew found themselves standing on top of the water again like in Franky's first flashback. They looked around and saw near them a small rowboat. "Who's is this?" Usopp asked, looking around.

_"They'd never think a bandit like me would flee to sea,"_ the crew heard laughter coming from the boat and looked closer as the people inside started to show themselves.

_Damn! Let me go you mountain monkey!"_ A seven year old version of Luffy shouted and the crew stared in shock as the bandit held their captain over the water. _"You should just go and die."_

"Was this before or after you ate your Devil Fruit?" Chopper asked.

"Um, after," Luffy said, thinking back on the moment. "I was never really good at swimming anyway though."

"Wait," Nami started, thinking about an earlier memory, "I thought you lived with the bandits?"

"Not him. The bandits I lived with were cool, I hated these guys," he looked back at the man holding his past self.

"Big mouth for a little kid telling him to go die," Franky laughed, knowing his captain would make it out of this situation. "Bet he wasn't too happy 'bout that."

_"Stupid, you're the one who's going to die,"_ the tan-skinned man with long black hair and a pointy black beard sneered at the kid. _"You really pissed me off."_

"Where's your Straw Hat?" Brook asked, noticing the empty spot on top of Luffy's messy hair.

"Shanks hadn't given it to me yet," Luffy said and the crew heard something in his voice, something dark. "It was after..."

He was cut off by the man tossing his former self into the water. "LUFFY!" Most of his crew shouted as their captain landed with a splash. The only one who didn't scream was Robin whose eyes were glassy and looking the other direction. No one noticed her, being too distracted by the new memory.

Flashback Luffy didn't sink down into the water, he clearly couldn't swim at all, but he flailed around enough to keep his head over for the moment. _"Sorry,"_ the bandit laughed from the rowboat and the Straw Hat crew glared at him. _"You're of no use to me now."_

"I'm going to gut that son... of..." Sanji froze and dropped the cigarette from his mouth. He muttered a curse as that was a new one he just put in, but he couldn't help it. The water behind the laughing madman started to rise up and a head emerged. An enormous sea serpent with dark red eyes came out of the water and was glaring straight at the bandit who froze mid-laugh.

He snapped his head backwards and screamed, _"What the hell is that?!"_ Behind him, kid Luffy stared in horror while he struggled to stay afloat. The man in the rowboat couldn't do anything as the sea monster opened its mouth and chomped down on the bandit.

"AHH!" Usopp and Chopper screamed as the entire boat was destroyed in one bite. The monster turned its head to Luffy and a horrible situation just got ten times worse.

_"Someone help!"_ Luffy's gargled voice called out.

"It's gonna eat you!" Nami screamed.

"Move!" Franky shouted, but it was useless and the beast started charging at their captain.

It moved so fast through the water that they could barely see it approach, but when it got right in front of seven year old Luffy, it opened its mouth as wide as it could, showing rows of razor sharp teeth.

"NO!" Every member of the crew shouted, this time including Robin who looked over hearing the screams. Their shouts were caught in their throats as the memory continued and they were still on the water.

The monster had snapped its jaws together and the pointy teeth snapped right next to their captain who seemed to move impossibly fast in the last second. "Is that," Zoro started and the others looked to where he and Luffy were already looking, "Shanks?"

_"Shanks?"_ Kid Luffy answered the question as he looked to his savior.

Red Hair Shanks stayed perfectly still and the crew felt unnerved when they looked at his face. He had three long scars over his left eye and he glared at them with the harshest eyes they'd ever seen. _"Get lost!"_

A few of the members who weren't as scared turned around since they knew he couldn't have been talking to them. They saw the large green serpent sweating hard and its eyes bugged out as it screamed in fear. It turned tail and swam away and a wave of relief washed over them all.

Adult Luffy was staring down at himself with cold eyes and he looked at Shanks with regret. _"I owe you one Luffy. Makino-san told me everything."_

"He owes you one?" Franky asked confused.

"Does he not know how saving someone's life works?" Sanji questioned, wondering why the man could feel the need to say that.

_"You fought them because of us."_ Shanks smiled down at the kid who was crying in front of him. _"Hey don't cry. You're a man."_

"Fought them?" Nami asked, thinking she understood the situation. She was going to ask Luffy what he meant to check her hypothesis, but she saw Luffy and Zoro staring at one spot in particular. She looked over to the other side of Shanks than where they were staring and her hand shot to her mouth, her eyes going wide.

_"But Shanks,"_ Luffy sobbed, _"Your arm!"_

The rest of the crew looked up from their captain who they were worried about and to Shanks's hand that was resting on his head. Nothing looked wrong with it and they turned to the other side before dropping their jaws to the floor. Shanks's entire left arm from the shoulder down was gone, leaving just a rip in his sleeve where blood dripped down into the water.

"Red Hair Shanks," Sanji whispered, "gave up his arm for you." He thought about how Red Leg Zeff gave up a leg for him and saw just how similar he and his captain were.

The water started to shake and the sky as well as the memory deteriorated. _"It isn't worth much, it's just one arm. I'm glad you're safe."_ Past Luffy only cried louder at these words, the guilt digging at him.

However, the guilt the old version of Luffy felt, didn't even compare to how he was feeling right now. _Shanks, Ace, Zoro, Ace, Shanks, Zoro. Why did they save me? It, I-I wasn't worth it._ "AHHHHH!" Luffy screamed and grabbed his head as he fell to his knees.

"Luffy!" Chopper turned and ran to him but the captain released his fists and tore at the ground with his fingers.

The captain snapped his head up at his crew who were all staring at him and his head focused on Zoro. "I didn't ask you to save me!" Luffy shouted at him.

Everyone knew that this wasn't just about Shanks anymore. "Didn't you tell me?! When we met, what did you tell me?!" The captain shouted at Zoro whose face stayed firm the whole time. "What happened to, 'I'll always follow my own ambition'? You said you were going to be the best swordsman and if I did anything that would cause you to abandon those ambitions, that I'd end my life on your sword! Why did you sacrifice yourself for me!?"

The blackness was silent and the wisps weren't even floating around much anymore. They seemed to have frozen to watch the two. "Luffy," Nami whispered, "Zoro," she looked over and saw the green haired man had not changed his flat expression once the whole time. _Did he really say that?_

A few of the crew members were looking at Zoro, wondering what changed from when Luffy recruited him to the point that he was willing to give his life for the man.

"You're my captain," Zoro answered, unwavering from Luffy's glare. "If I couldn't even protect my own captain, how could I have become the best swordsman? That's what I was thinking." He told the boy in the straw hat. Luffy's eyes softened and Zoro continued, "It's in the past now, all of it is." He was referring to Shanks and Ace as well, knowing his captain was incorporating them all in his pain.

Luffy's face seemed to change to one of understanding and the girl in the sky above them was getting tired of all this. "You aren't going to break," she whispered almost to herself, but the group heard her, "though your friend will, with not so much as one more push."

The crew turned their heads a little to Robin who was trying to be strong, but couldn't fight back the person in her head, stealing away her darkest memories. "Robin," Nami whispered over to the black haired woman covering her face.

Robin lowered her hands from in front of her eyes and they all stared at the horrified expression she had. Her mind was open now, every horrible thing from the last twenty years was rushing back to her all at once. "Ahhhhh!" She grabbed her head and the memory wisps started swirling faster around her. In every one, the center person was a small girl with black hair. Finally the images stopped and all of them expanded out covering the entire area.

The whole space was black, the memory covering it. Suddenly it flashed and it all went red. "What?!" Sanji shouted as he looked around, another flash of the memory appearing in front of them.

_"HELP!"_ the memory flashed and they saw blood all over a child's face, she was screaming and holding someone's head as they laid out flat. Whoever it was had a friendly face and a hole in his chest and forehead as he leaned on the young girl. The guy's body was unmoving and young Robin screamed in anguish but the memory flashed back to black.

Chopper was so scared he couldn't hold it together and fell to his knees, covering his eyes. The others watched in horror as a new vision appeared and there was a lush green forest with a giant tree in the center of a grassy field. A village poked out of an area where there was a clearing and birds were flying around in the sky. The memory blacked out and then flashed back in, the same exact location. Their mouths dropped as the entire forest burned furiously, the houses exploding in balls of fire. The giant tree in the center of the island was burning hot and a flame exploded out from it and engulfed the entire memory that faded out again.

"Holy shit," Sanji muttered under his breath, still shaken from the last image. "What the hell was..." he turned his head and saw tears streaming down Robin's face. "Robin-chan," he whispered.

They only received one word in response, "Ohara."

**A/N Next time we get Ohara, yes! Can't wait and I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I take a lot of liberties with Robin's memories since there's a whole twenty year period where she had to survive with any means possible. Leave a review telling me what you think, and I'll post the M memory of what happened then and what I originally wrote before cropping it out for not meeting T standards. "One Piece Memories Robin" I'll call it. Anyway, thanks to the person who reviewed, though I'd like to see more :(.**

RedZoro

Really good chapter  
:)

**Thanks a lot!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7:**

The memory wisps started pushing into each other and changing environments. It looked like their captor was struggling with Robin's memory and she couldn't show it. "Quickly," Nami urged as she looked into the fearful eyes of her friend, "we have to get out of here, NOW!"

"I'm breaking through Nico Robin, I'm getting everything," the girl cackled and then continued as she saw the fighters below looking around for her. "In the meantime, I'd like you to start focusing your anger on each other." The memories stopped flying around and one became larger than the others as it took over.

Everything seemed dark and the vision was blurry for the moment but they could all hear laughing and snickering in the background. _"What a weakling!"_

No one had figured out what memory this was yet, or who it belonged to, but one cyborg recognized the voice and smiled. "That's Zambai!" He exclaimed and the others looked at him, wondering if it was his memory. It had been a while since they saw the Franky Brothers and it would be a welcome sight.

_"Yeah, I couldn't believe he was one of the Straw Hat Pirates. Bahahaha, he was so pathetic,"_ the man speaking this time came into view and they saw a dark room full of Franky Brothers. However, the mood quickly dropped and not even Franky was happy to see them knowing when this was.

The cyborg turned to Usopp but the long-nosed pirate had walked away from him and was standing on the opposite side of the group. _"Oh Oh OH! Two hundred million beri!?"_

_ "Yes 200,000,000 beri!"_

"Is that you Franky-san?" Brook asked the cyborg as he looked at the masked man sitting on a chair in the room. No one responded to him and they all stared at the memory in disgust.

"That's our money," Nami growled in anger as she saw all the money flashback Franky was holding.

_"How does it feel Aniki?"_ Zambai asked.

_"Awesome! You guys are the best. With this much money, I can buy my heart's desire!"_ The man in the flashback started flipping the cash through his fingers and it angered the majority of the crew who were watching.

"Hey Hey!" Present Franky yelled at them. "That money got us the Sunny, so don't be mad about it!"

"You stole it from us!" Zoro shouted back at the man.

"And beat up..." Chopper stopped and looked behind him to see Usopp looking the other way, staring at the door of the building.

The men in the flashback continued rambling about all their failed ventures in the gambling and bounty hunting businesses. They all seemed so happy about it that it almost seemed alright not to be mad at them, _almost._

_"That's right guys. Good work!" _The old Franky shouted out and his men looked like they really adored him by the way they cheered after he spoke. Mozu and Kiwi, the twins, stood on either side of him and also looked thrilled about the money. _"Now is isn't much, but here's 5,000,000 beri as a token of my appreciation! Eat, drink, and make merry all you want!"_

"You said it all went towards the ship!" Nami screamed at him. The money being wasted wasn't really what upset her. She was the one who found Usopp on the sidewalk after Franky's goons stole the money from him. No matter how long the shipwright was in the crew for, she'd never forget what he did.

The cyborg stepped back away from the woman and her rage and looked back at the memory, trying to enjoy the sight of his friends while it lasted. Through the sound of all the cheering and laughter, a huge explosion blasted in the room and knocked many of the people off their feet. The door on the side wall exploded and smoke filled the entrance.

_"Wh-what!?" _Past Franky almost fell out of his seat in shock.

_ "Damn!"_

_ "What crazed lunatic dares to attack the Franky Brothers?"_

"You weren't that tough," Sanji muttered through clenched teeth.

The crew stared at the clearing smoke and the lone figure on the other side of it. "U-usopp-san?!" Brook shouted in shock and almost fell backwards. He didn't know what was going on here, but the tension in the present was so thick he felt he cut slice it with his sword.

The man called Zambai looked through the smoke and sneered, _"Eh? It's that pathetic wuss!"_

_ "He's still standing?"_

Memory Usopp's eyes were dark, blood dripped down his face and he had wounds covering every inch of his body. "What happened to you?" Brook shouted out in anger.

"He happened," Nami shoved a finger in Franky's direction who held up his hands in surrender.

"I'm sorry alright? That was a long time ago, I didn't know you were such SUPER guys back then." Most of the crew had long since forgiven Franky for this, but being forced to see it again brought back the hostile feelings they had towards him.

_"Give back the money,"_ Usopp growled into the building full of men. His eyes were bloodshot and he didn't look to be playing around.

_"'Give back the money?' So bro, are you one of Straw Hat's henchmen?"_

"Henchmen?" Luffy said with a small frown. His nakama were more to him than that. "I don't have any hench..."

"I know I know," Franky yelled back at him. "Sheesh, just drop it."

_"That's right Aniki! He was with Straw Hat Luffy, so we thought he might be pretty strong!"_

_ "But then he turned out to be the weakest guy I've ever seen!"_

Sanji turned his head a little to Usopp. The other boy had grown a lot in the past two years, his arms and chest were noticably more muscular than the one in the memory and the chef felt like saying something to him, but the sniper looked up and glared at the men in the memory with so much hate in his eyes.

Flashback Usopp went sprinting through the crowd of enemies and lunged straight for the briefcase full of money. Not a very good strategy, but they knew how he felt. His head slammed into the wall behind Franky and all the members of his group started laughing their heads off, making each of the present-day Straw Hats clench their fists.

_"What's he doing?"_ a man said while clenching his stomach from laughing too hard.

_"I'll admit you've got balls for coming here alone, but I won't be giving it back."_ Memory Franky's face was hiding behind the mask, but they could all see the corners of his smile sticking out of either side.

_"Give it back," _Usopp muttered as he got to his hands and knees, pushing himself back up. _"We have to repair our ship."_

They each felt a strong pain in their chests at the mention of Merry. At this point no one had told Usopp that the ship was broken, that nothing could save her. And Franky was making it so much worse.

_"We need that money,"_ Usopp pulled himself to his feet and the crew wished they never had to see this. The two were friends now, there was no need for all of them to be caught up in the nasty history the two of them once had. _"That money is..."_ he turned around and had the same look in his eyes as the present version as he glared straight into Franky's eyes through the mask and finished, _"our chance to finally fix up Merry! I'M NOT LETTING YOU TAKE IT!"_

"Wow," Chopper said in proud amazement, "you're so brave here Usopp."

Even this bit of praise didn't calm down the sniper at all, "Empty words." He mumbled, looking back at his old self in pity.

"I'm sorry bro..." Franky started but his past self cut him off and made him cringe.

_"HAHAHAHA! Who do you think you're talking to? It sounds like you really love that little ship of yours. Well, regardless of what happens to your ship, this money is ours now."_

"Franky-san!" Brook said in astonishment.

Robin was shivering in the same spot she was standing since her memory ended. No one had noticed, but she wasn't watching Usopp's memory. Her eyes were clenched shut and she was trying so hard not to think of any of the memories slipping out of the box she kept them in. It was hard fighting the girl as she became stronger and stronger, and she was losing the fight fast.

She didn't have the luxury to focus on anyone else's thoughts, because if she lost focus for even a second, every wall would break down.

_"It's too bad that society doesn't consider stealing from pirates a crime."_ Nami winced, realizing she was in the same boat as these despicable losers. She stole from pirates all the time, how would Franky have known what type of people they were, he probably just assumed they were like all other pirates: disgusting and evil. _"This is probably dirty money you lowlifes stole from someone else. Hahaha! Just let me have it."_ He paused and stared down at the broken sharpshooter in front of him, _"If that's not good enough, try crying to the Marines. You'll be the only ones they catch."_ All the Franky Brothers were now staring down at their nakama with looks that made them shiver and wish they could touch the people inside the memory.

_"Straw Hat Luffy is certainly unfortunate. His useless henchman can't even handle holding on to some money."_ Half the crew froze at those words.

Everyone who was on board the Merry that night thought back on Usopp's words. _'A nakama who can't pull their weight gets cut loose and left behind...'_ each of them turned one by one and glared at Franky. Robin wasn't there and neither was Brook, but both could feel the anger in the area rise. They kept thinking about what Usopp said before he left the crew, _'...I could never be as incredible as you guys. Just today, I couldn't even handle guarding some money..."_

Even Zoro, who remained so composed during Usopp's split from the crew, couldn't help but shoot their shipwright a dirty glare. Usopp's self-pity, his putting down of himself, Franky started it all by making him feel this way. Maybe the main reason for breaking off was because he wanted to stay with Merry, but their friend was seriously hurt in the head by what the Franky Family did to him.

Nami covered her mouth as she thought about Usopp's words. _'Where you're heading, I'll be nothing but a burden. You don't need a weak nakama right...'_ "How could you?" She yelled at Franky, charging over at him and slapping him in the face.

"Nami-san," Sanji tried to calm but he stopped as memory Franky kicked Usopp in the face sending the pirate sprawling backwards with blood flowing from his face.

_"You guys can play with him all you like! I'm ready to go on a shopping spree." _They were all glaring at the past version of Franky and wanted to kick his ass so badly right now. Robin was even distracted from her own thoughts when her friend was kicked in the face.

_"Wait! Sure-kill Gunpowder Star!"_ Franky punched the ball as it came towards him and it exploded in mid-flight.

_"Let me tell you something long-nose. My name is Franky. If you want to survive in this city, don't cross me."_ Franky's goons came up on either side of Usopp and started pulling him by the arms.

One of them stomped his hand and forced the sniper to release his weapon. _"This weak-ass weapon can't do shit!"_ He picked it up and threw it over his shoulder and their leader started speaking again.

_"See ya long-nose, thanks for the 200,000,000 beri."_ Memory Franky walked away, waving to the helpless boy behind him who squirmed and tried to escape from the group of men holding him down.

_"Give it back! It's for Merry! Give it back!"_ Zambai punched Usopp in the stomach and he collapsed to the floor before the rest of the room crowded around him. The memory started to shake as Franky was almost at the door now, but even in the completely battered state he was in, past Usopp lifted his head to the cyborg, _"Give it back."_

He reached out a hand towards the light of the exit but as the doors started to close, he couldn't do anything but scream as the group of men around him started kicking and punching him while he was down. The men were stomping on his back and his head, _"GIVE IT BACK!"_ he yelled one final time as the stomps continued and the memory fell apart.

The memory seemed to shake with each kick to Usopp's side but when Franky left, the room became dark again and the flashback ripped apart. Present Usopp noticed this and stopped moving. He stopped shaking in rage, stopped glaring at the last spot he saw the Franky Brothers, and slowly turned to their Franky.

The large cyborg was being yelled at by Nami, Sanji, Chopper, and Brook. Luffy was staring at him and shaking with clenched fists, but he was refraining from saying anything to his nakama. Robin went back to shaking in her spot as the thought of her old captain who raped her came back. Zoro accepted that this is what happened, and although he wasn't happy about it, it was far in the past.

"That was cruel!" Nami scolded.

"Why'd you say those things?" Chopper cried, thinking that maybe Usopp's breaking from the ship could have been avoided.

"Guys," Usopp started and everyone turned to him.

Franky turned last and he could barely look at the sniper. His head was pointed down and he wouldn't let them see his eyes. The regret he held in his heart wasn't only for what happened to Tom.

The long-nosed pirate looked at Franky for a few seconds and then said out loud, "This wasn't my memory." The rest of them were confused by what he meant from this, "It started before I got there, and ended as soon as Franky left." The crew started to realize what this meant and turned their heads to the man who this memory really hurt.

Sure, watching yourself get beaten up is never fun, but watching yourself beat someone else up who didn't deserve it. They all knew Franky, and the look on his face hurt the crew members who were only seconds before yelling at him. "I forgive you Franky," Usopp said, shocking the others. He couldn't believe he was saying it himself after what he just watched, but after everything he'd seen over the last hour or so, he couldn't stay mad at Franky for this. It seemed so, petty.

"Bro," Franky said and lifted his head before bawling streams of tears. "I love you man!" He ran over and wrapped Usopp in a tight hug and lifted him off the ground, shaking him back and forth. His tears were getting all over the sniper who tried pushing him away while laughing.

The other members of the crew weren't so quick to forget what they just saw, but they tried to remember that was a long time ago and let bygones be bygones. "Hahaha!" The little girl in the sky laughed and the crew stared up with smirks on their faces.

"What are you laughing about?" Zoro said with a grin. "You wanted us to start fighting each other, but we're stronger than that." The few members who were yelling at Franky before scratched the backs of their heads sheepishly. "You're losing."

"Really?" the girl asked innocently. She started cackling again and wiped the smiles off of their faces. "Then how come I have everything? Nico Robin," the girl said in a high-pitched shriek, "I will break you in front of your crew!" The memories started to swirl around them and screams were heard from every side. Women, children, the old, everyone was screaming, and one other voice followed them.

"Ahhhh!" Robin yelled and clamped her hands over her ears.

**A/N Hope you enjoyed the penultimate chapter that I just wrote. I had this story finished from the moment I posted the first chapter but as I was posting them I felt there were other scenes I could add. Sorry for it being a little short, but the final chapter is by far the longest so don't worry. Next time, we get Robin, all of her! There are a few others in too, but I hope you enjoyed Straw Hats Stuck in Memories and leave a review telling me what you think before the final chapter. **

Daseki no Kama

hello I just read the last two chapters it was like... wow  
poor Robin, I can't imagine what s like not only live this events, but live with the memory of that ! and on the top of that having your friends watching you whole dark secrets it just awful!

**I took a lot of liberties with Robin cuz the show really doesn't go into those twenty years alone that much. She had a really hard life, the hardest in my opinion of any of the Straw Hats, which is why I've held her off until the very end. Mwhaha.**

beixuu

o dios mio¡ me encanta la historia¡ y este capitulo... este capitulo es la cosa mas genial del mundo (me ha roto el alma pero es genial, en serio)

**Muchas Gracias**

RedZoro

Don't be depressive cause of review I'm sure they just don't want to repeat themself and to say the same thing like that "Your chapter is Suuuuper" but they think that.  
More I'm here to say you that.  
Good luck to wrote the others chapters

**Haha, thanks for the encouragement and I hope you enjoyed this second to last chapter.**

RosesandEdgars

I've been waiting for a story like this for a while. Straw Hats watching Luffy's memories are cool, but they've been over-used at this point. Straw Hats watching each other's memories though... I want to see their reactions to each others past! Anyway, this chapter was super sad. Poor Robin and Luffy :(

**Main reason I wrote it is cuz I was reading Warm Memories and Brotherly Bonds and thought it would be cool if they all got to see each other's memories. Thanks for the review and careful of reading the next chapter, Robin might just bring you to tears ;(.**

kakawuh

Good job. An interesting plot with a good grasp of the characters. Definitely looking forwards to the next chapter.

**Thank you very much. I have a few One Piece fanfics I'm writing right now and it's great to know I'm writing the characters the way they would act in the show.**

usagi

Really good chapter :) i was happy that you wrote about shanks :)))

**Thanks! Same, felt like it was a great flashback, and it brought Sanji closer to his captain.**

Okami1001

i loved the moment with the memory of Shanks, and how Sanji notes how he and Luffy are similar and looks like next chapter will be intense.

also i have to wonder, how is the gang going to beat this kid? also i love how Luffy was just like "everyone stop fighting, you're doing what she wants you do to" and everyone freezes, awesome moment.

**Loved the memory too! How they beat the kid will be revealed next chapter, and I'm sorry if this one wasn't too intense, but I felt I had to add this scene before I put an end to the story. Thanks for the review!**

jake

you trying to make a lemon

**Ummmm... no?**

Ralman23

I really like this. Hope you update as well.

**And I really like your profile picture! Great scene with a scary Luffy, *shivers. Thanks for the review and to everyone who read, followed, or favorited and I'll see you soon!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8:**

A image started to form around them and this time the older woman could feel that it was definitely her memory again. Robin's legs were shaking and her entire body was trembling. "Luffy," she whispered and everyone looked at her. It really unnerved them all to see her in such a state.

She was normally with Zoro as the strongest members of the crew emotionally. Nothing could phase her, but just one of her memories had her on the verge of tears and the memory wisps started to form again. "Luffy, please," she pleaded and Nami knew that if she moved, the woman using her shoulder as a crutch would collapse.

They all wanted to help her but the darkness was gone and they were on a grassy cliff. There were four people in front of them on the edge and they could see the sky was rough with black storm clouds.

The water down below was covered in white caps and slamming into the rock wall a hundred feet below. Looking down over the edge of the grass they could see large rocks sticking out of the water.

Chopper's eyes went wide as he was the first to turn around. The others turned to look as well and saw a teenage version slightly older than the one they'd witnessed earlier. On either side of her were men who looked like hard-bitten criminals. The one right behind her had a hand on her shoulder and was wearing a ripped up purple pirate captain hat.

_'Great job using your powers to discover these rats on our ship,' _the man congratulated the girl. Teenage Robin didn't move a muscle except to nod her head. Her expression was blank and her eyes void of all emotion.

The adult version of the woman saw the four people on the edge and didn't even turn around to see herself. She was shaking harder than ever and Nami turned away from younger Robin to watch where she was looking. The orange-haired girl looked back and forth and slowly realized what was about to happen.

_'Yeah you've finally proven yourself as a member of the crew,' _a guy on her right with an eyepatch smirked.

_'Not just yet,' _the captain behind Robin said and now the girl reacted. She turned her head a little and her eyes, and the eyes of almost all the present crew members went wide as the man behind her was holding the barrel of a pistol. _'Take it,' _he ordered.

She reached up and grabbed the handle of the gun. One of the men kneeling on the ground started to whimper. His glasses fell off and he reached down, trying to grab them with his teeth since his hands were tied.

The shorter boy next to him started to cry, and the man who looked like him on his left started pleading_, 'Please, we weren't planning on mutinying, we just wanted to leave the crew. Let us live, forgive us, we'll stay on the crew. At least let my son...'_

_'Kill them,' _this voice vibrated around the memory and continued to echo as adult Nico Robin screamed and fell back to her knees.

"No, no, no, no, no," she kept shouting as she grabbed her ears.

"Robin!" Chopper shouted but there was nothing he could do to help her. Each crew member was dealing with their own memories, but it was hard to imagine their own hardships with Robin's memory in front of them.

The teenage girl holding the gun didn't react at all like the older woman. She grabbed the gun and pointed it at the fat man all the way on the right.

_'Wait! I have a wife, she's pregn...' _A huge crack of thunder boomed in the background of the memory and everything went silent as lightning crackled across the sky. During the brief moment when the memory was better lit, the crew saw the splash of blood exploding from the man's chest. His kneeling form dropped backwards off the cliff and he was gone.

The man slightly to her right slammed his head on the ground and began babbling for her to let him live. His begs got no response as the crew started to hear the rain again only for it to be drowned out by the sound of another loud crack, only this time it wasn't from the sky.

The person's head was pushed farther in the ground and he stopped moving. Even the men behind Robin seemed unnerved and a few took steps back as the teen didn't hesitate to put another man down mercilessly.

The captain who told her to do it was also looking at her in fear as she turned the gun towards the kid. He looked to be a few years younger than her and she paused for a split second before pulling her finger on the trigger. _"No!"_

Next to the boy, his father lunged his tied up body in front of the trembling boy. This act of sacrifice seemed to shake the teenage girl from her state and her eyes went wide. _'Daddy? Dad!' _The boy started shaking his father's body.

_'She's cold...'_

_ 'A real monster...'_

_ 'The Devil's Child...'_

These words echoed through her mind as the old crew members behind her started whispering louder than they thought. The captain right behind her stepped back and he looked on as the girl lowered her gun a little. _'There's one left,' _he whispered.

Young Robin looked away from the two dead bodies of the men in front of her and back to the kid who was crying at the edge. He looked back and their eyes met, everyone watching knew the two of them were looking each other straight in the eyes, into each other's souls.

"That bastard, forcing..." Sanji didn't finish his sentence as they watched Robin lift the gun and point it at the boy's face. Her hand was shaking but her eyes were cold and the pistol fired.

Suddenly the ground began to shake. The pink haired girl who was holding them here started screaming, "STOP! What are you doing?!" The memory was vibrating more violently than any they had seen the entire time. The thunderstorm in the sky started ripping the place to part with lightning that sliced across the sky and tore the memory at that point.

"What's happening?" Usopp screamed as he lost his balance and fell to the ground next to Nami and Robin.

"Robin's pushing her out of the memory," Nami responded just as loud. She was trying to comfort the woman, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the boy's face.

His face seemed to get larger as a hole formed in his forehead and blood spurted out in every direction. The exploding memory became tinted with red that dripped down every side.

They could all see the younger Robin's expression as the boy tilted back like he was going to fall off the cliff but then stopped. His back leaned over but his knees were planted on the ground and he wasn't falling off. _'Fall,' _she urged in a small whisper and the others couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Tears started coming out of the teenager's eyes as she stared at the boy on the edge for longer and longer. Her body was shaking and she looked down at the gun in her hand with the utmost disgust. _'Rahhhh!' _She chucked it as far as she could over the cliff and her crew members in the memory were staring at her in terror.

_'Just fall already!' _She shouted between sobs and ran over to the edge. She lifted a foot when she got close and planted it against the boy's stomach. This was closer than she'd ever been to the kid and his soaked bloody face was most vivid._ 'I'm sorry,' _they heard her whisper as lightning cracked all around her.

His face split in two as the memory destroyed itself in the most violent manner possible. She pushed into the kick and his body toppled over the ledge, his eyes open and looking up at her the entire time he fell.

As the wisps holding the memory together finally started to fade, they all heard voices behind her. The first was of the man with the eyepatch, _'She's ruthless. It's too dangerous to keep her on board.'_

Then they heard the captain in a fading voice, _'You're right. Next time she falls asleep we'll cash in her bounty. Stupid little bitch,' _the last thing they heard was the maniac's laughter.

Nobody could say anything as they all stood there in the blackness. Usopp got back to his feet and looked at the older woman with fear. He realized what he was doing and cursed at his instincts, knowing that he was doing exactly what the little girl fighting them wanted. Still...

"Yow," Franky whispered. All the guilt he'd been feeling for getting his master killed was replaced with pity and an unease in his stomach. His guilt was important to him, but compared to what he just witnessed, he felt he got off easy.

"I wish I had not seen that," Brook uttered, not even adding that he didn't have eyes.

Zoro felt bad for the woman and didn't say a word. She had her head bowed and they could all see her trembling, staring at her hands in horror.

"That's all in the past," Nami cooed into her ear and pet the woman's long hair.

"How?" Robin whispered and only Nami heard her. "How could she have found that? I haven't thought about Louis for fourteen years. I didn't even remember... it was like watching a different person." The guilt coursing through her was too intense, it was driving her mad.

"Are you all ready?" A shrill voice shouted from the sky. They were all angrier at her than ever before now and even Sanji was glaring up at the sky with murderous intent for whoever caused Robin this much pain. "I'm going to break her," she giggled, "and it's going to be so much fun!"

"Ahhhh!" Robin grabbed her hair and screamed up at the sky as panic set in. "I don't want to watch anymore! Don't make me watch!"

"Too late," the girl sneered and the wisps floating around them started getting more defined and pulling themselves into each other.

Luffy took off his Straw Hat and walked over to where Robin was on her knees. The woman looked up at Luffy with horrified eyes and his face soothed her. He smiled at her and lowered his hat on top of her head, "You don't have to watch Robin."

Only Zoro and Sanji could see the next movement as Luffy moved faster than the others could witness. He chopped the side of Nico Robin's neck hard, since she was a strong woman. Her eyes rolled back and her eyelids closed as she crumpled into Nami's arms.

The navigator was so confused at what just happened since Luffy didn't even seem to move. Zoro nodded in understanding and Sanji sighed a breath of relief. He never would have been able to do that, but he knew it was for the best.

"Aww, that makes it less fun," the girl said in a disappointed tone. "Well, at least now I don't have to worry about her interrupting _my _memories with her annoying blocks."

"They're not your memories!" Usopp shouted furiously at the sky.

"That's right!" Brook agreed.

"Either way, I control them. That makes them mine," she laughed and two large fragments pulled together and the crew watched as it surrounded them on all sides.

The crew was in the midst of a circle of trees and Robin was standing in the middle. A group of boys were taunting her and throwing tomatoes.

_ 'We did it!'_

_ 'Take that monster!'_

Chopper instantly felt guilt since he always felt unique in that aspect. He thought that the other members didn't know what it was like to live their lives being called a monster. But here was Robin, no older than eight years old, getting cast aside by society.

_ 'So creepy!'_

'_Monster. Monster!' _They chanted at her.

The girl frowned and glared over at them. She swung her arm and large vines of arms extended from her sides and punched the boys on the heads. "Serves the little twerps right. I'd have beat some manners into them myself," Sanji growled.

_'Ah, I've been attacked by a monster!' _The boys all started crying and ran off as the memory changed.

They were in the same location and could see remnants of the tomato on Robin's childhood face. A bunch of birds had gathered around her, but scattered as a grown woman approached.

"She doesn't look too happy," Franky stated.

_'Hey there,' _the woman barked in a mean tone. _'My kids came home crying that they were beaten even though they didn't do anything.'_

"Well your kids were lying!" Usopp shouted ironically.

_'Don't approach my kids anymore. Can't you say anything?! Geez! You really are a disgusting girl.' _Memory Robin started running away and the vision faded again.

"Harsh," Zoro stated.

"She didn't deserve any of that, she's just a kid," Nami whispered. She thought about how she felt her village hated her, but now that she thought about it, they never said such things to her. It was because they knew what she was doing the whole time, but at the time she thought it was hard.

Next they saw her walking through some sort of town square. As she walked through the marketplace in a purple dress with no sleeves, a younger little girl walked past while holding her parent's hands. _'Hey hey, what are we having for dinner tonight?'_

_'What do you want to eat?' _asked her mom.

_ 'Hmm, I want, I want...' _the girl sounded so happy as she skipped along with her folks. _'Home Rice!'_

Her father chuckled, _'You really like Home Rice!'_

_'Yeah!'_

The mother laughed along too, _'Then I'll have to make a lot.'_

The memory faded as the happy family laughed into the distance.

It seemed like the same day when the memory started back up. Now they were inside a house and Robin was still wearing the same dress, but the sun was setting outside.

For the first time since the memories started, they heard her voice. It sounded so sad and empty,_ 'I'm home, sorry for being late.'_

"Oh good," Chopper sighed in relief, "from the way she looked at that family, I thought..." he stopped as no one was greeting her. The house was empty and she walked in.

_'Aunt Roji?' _The girl walked in and up to a piece of paper on the table.

Against all of their better judgments, they walked up and looked at it as she read. Chopper spoke out loud, "To Robin, today is our daughter's birthday. The three of our family, without any intruders have decided to go out to dinner."

"Sounds like a shitty family if you ask me," Franky muttered.

Chopper kept reading, "There's bread left for your dinner so eat it properly. Be sure not to use too much jam." His voice got sadder as he was reading it and it seemed like this was just a normal day in Robin's life if not a little more sad than usual. "When you're done eating and before we get home: wash the plates, clean the house, bring the laundry inside and be sure to go upstairs before it becomes too late."

The memory split apart around them and they watched on all sides as Robin washed the plates using her powers to help. On the other side she was taking down laundry from a rack outside. Then it showed her scrubbing back and forth on the floor that didn't look dirty.

It lasted a few more seconds before they saw tears drop from the girls face and she seemed shocked that she was crying. Robin rubbed her eyes and then used the brush to scrub her tears into the floor.

Finally the memory faded but didn't tear apart around them as they were still stuck in Robin's sequence. They couldn't figure out what it was about her seemingly casual memory that had them all feeling so sad, but it just had to do with her life.

Each one of them had had bad days, and a lot of them in fact. But when they looked at the way the eight year old took being treated like a monster and ignored by her family, they realized they all had fun times as kids that she never did.

Nami thought back to when her and her sister ran around the village happily and the great times she had stealing from pirates to save her village.

Usopp thought about growing up and playing pirate with the younger kids, never knowing that there was someone out there who spent those same years running from the largest organization on the planet.

Zoro thought about training to defeat Kuina. He recalled smiling and making his promise with her after their fight.

Franky remembered the good times building the Sea Train with Iceberg and Tom.

Brook recalled the great times as a pirate with his nakama.

Chopper thought about the way Doctor Hiluluk made him smile and how Doctorine taught him medicine.

Even Luffy started to think about his brothers subconsciously as he watched Robin. She was back and walking through the dark towards the biggest tree that any of them had ever seen.

"What?" Franky exclaimed. "That's Adam's Oak! The wood I made the Sunny out of. I never knew there was this much of it in the world."

The girl in the memory walked right up to the tree and towards a door while holding something in her hands. _'Good evening. Professor Clover, I've come to return the book.'_

Little pops were heard all around the room and the lights flickered on. The Straw Hats smiled as they watched the smiling people jump out like it was her birthday. _'Congratulations Robin!'_

_ 'You're amazing Robin.'_

_ 'A true genius!'_

"I'm confused," Nami scratched her head.

"I know what you mean Nami." Usopp stated, "I thought I had her entire childhood defined as horrible but it seems there are people who liked her."

"Of course there were," Sanji replied. "Just look at how cute she is," he said like that was the obvious reason.

They had a cake for her and the old man with weird hair like Chopper's quack doctor started talking. _'Robin. That doctor's test for archaeology you took the other day, you got a perfect score. From today on, you are finally recognized as an archaeologist.'_

She seemed so surprised and happy in one look that it confused the smiling Straw Hats who were expecting a bad memory. _'Starting from today, you'll be one of our companions who'll work on research with us.'_

She smiled wider than kid Robin ever had before and they could tell by the way she was straining to stretch her lips.

_ 'Here's the proof...' _The man started and then the memory started moving fast around them.

The young girl's annoying voice called out, "I don't wanna watch this! Show me the ugly!" It stopped fast forwarding and everyone still seemed happy, somewhat.

The old man in front of her put a hand on top of her head and the crew smiled at the warm scene. _'In the research that will appear on the road later on, you'll contribute to the world by understanding other cultures.'_

Young Robin spoke up enthusiastically, _'Professor, I want to solve the mystery of the Void history!'_

Everyone in the room seemed to panic at once and Clover shook his hand_, 'You can't you can't! That has always been forbidden!' _His eyes were wide and he was sweating but the girl wasn't dropping the subject.

_'Why? If we study the Poneglyphs, we'll know what happened in the avoid Century right?'_

He jumped backwards, _'Why do you know so much?' _He exclaimed,_ 'You've been using your ability to spy on us in the basement once again!'_

Chopper tilted his head, "Why would they be in the basement when there a room like this?" They were in the largest library any of them had ever seen.

"Because if these people were studying the Poneglyphs," Franky started, "then they were breaking one of the worst laws the World Government has."

The man was explaining the very same thing to the young girl who just didn't want to understand. She argued that they were all doing it in the basement and wouldn't let her in even if she asked.

She seemed pleading at this point, like becoming an archaeologist meant that she thought she'd finally be able to study with them. Everyone around her seemed disappointed and saddened by her will to study them, but no one was cracking. They were all against the idea.

"Why don't they let her help?" Usopp asked.

"Would you involve an eight year old in a treasonous crime if you could avoid it?" Nami responded and he closed his mouth.

_'Indeed,' _the man started as he got on eye-level with the shaking girl, _'you have become skilled enough to be called an archaeologist, but you are still just a kid. If you are found working with us, you'll be beheaded.'_

"Just for reading!?" Chopper exclaimed.

Brook nodded his head, "It has always been like this. A law longer than I have been alive for."

The old librarian continued, _'This is something we're doing, being fully prepared. Since eight hundred years ago when this became the law of the world, there have been as many scholars who have lost their lives trying to uncover the truth as there are stars in the sky. This is a good time. I'll tell you about it,' _Robin kept crying as he spoke, not wanting any excuses why she couldn't follow her dream.

_'Those who are able to decipher those ancient, historical writings, are those in Ohara alone. We can't go back anymore. Swear on the Tree of Omniscience! The next time you approach the basement, we will forbid you from entering the research facility and the library!' _He told her and her eyes grew wider as more tears spilled, _'Got it?!'_

She ran away and sprinted out the door to end the memory. "Great way to end the party," Franky muttered feeling for everyone here. The people just wanted the girl to be safe, and Robin just wanted to follow her dream.

_'Wa-water,' _a voice grumbled and they looked around to see the memory was separating into many fragments again.

In each one they saw Robin, and surprisingly a humongous giant next to her. He had long orange hair that looked like a mane around his head.

_ 'Ya saved me, thanks,' _the giant said in one of the images as he finished drinking water. As that one and the first to fade in disappeared, on the other sides of the Straw Hats, more memories of him followed.

_'Is this your first time seeing a giant?' _She nodded and they all looked to a flashback of Robin standing on a hill next to the odd man. _'I'll warn you, don't judge me as bein' like those barbaric giants from Elbaf. There are peaceful giant clans too ya know.'_

"Hey, don't diss on Dorry and Brogy," Usopp shouted and Luffy agreed. "Those giants were awesome and from Elbaf."

The giant continued to tell her not to tell anyone that he was there. Even though she said she understood, the man just kept saying that she was lying.

"Who would she tell?" Nami whispered sadly.

_'There's no way a kid like you could keep a secret.'_

It sounded like a low blow, but she hit below the belt and retorted calmly, _'But I'm not interested in you.'_

He started chuckling and shaking back and forth as he laughed_, 'Derishishishishi, derishishi,'_ he continued even as the girl questioned.

_'Dereshi? What is that?'_

"It seems like every giant has their own type of unique laugh," Nami smiled remembering Little Garden's giants.

_'What are you talking about, I'm laughin!'_ He continued making the weird noise and Robin stared at him in awe, looking like she'd never heard of laughing before. His laugh was contagious however and soon she was laughing too.

The giant told her that she should laugh more and she blushed, her cuteness making everyone in the crew smile. _'I go by the name Saul. Hagwarl D. Saul.'_

_'D?' _Robin asked and suddenly the crew became silent. They watched as the little girl seemed intrigued by the letter in between the man's names.

_ 'Yeah, I don't really know much about it,' _Luffy's ears perked up and he mentioned that he had that letter in his name. The rest of the crew sighed since that was already why they were listening close. _'Everyone in my family line's got it.'_

"This one is trouble," Zoro stated. The others looked at him, "He may say he's from a peaceful clan, but have you ever heard of a peaceful man with a 'D' in his name?"

"Luffy and Ace have the craziest families I've ever heard of. Then there's Blackbeard," Nami stated and shook her head before looking back at the giant with a nervous look, hoping he didn't do anything to Robin.

The memory behind them started to get louder as this one began to fade and they turned. It looked like a similar area with Robin sitting atop a cliff, the Tree of Omniscience far in the background. "Don't ya get bored?" Saul asked her. "You come here to keep me company all day, don't your friends and parents notice you're gone?"

"I don't have any parents. I have a mother, but she's been sailing the seas for her job since I was little." The crew members who had seen the small blurry memory of the white haired woman leaving behind her daughter looked at each other. "I don't even remember her face. I like all the archaeologists, but they won't let me join in on their research so I'm being left out. As for the kids in town... they say I'm creepy so they won't play with me."

"Rough times," Franky said wiping a tear from his eye. He never wanted to go and play with the other kids, but it hurt to see someone that did not get to. To get left out because she was different from them.

The little girl showed Saul her powers but he didn't seem surprised. He told her he'd sailed the Grand Line and seen many Devil Fruit eaters so he wasn't scared.

"I'm jealous," he started with a large grin, "it looks handy!" His play on words made Luffy start cracking up despite the situation and then the Goofy Trio all started laughing the same way as the giant, "Dereshi shi shi," he laughed along with the pirates.

"Why are we watching these?" Nami suddenly asked.

"I was thinking the same thing," Brook mentioned as he looked around and saw Saul and Robin laughing in a lot of different scenarios all looking to have spanned the same few days.

"I can only think of one reason," they all turned to Zoro who was staring silently at the flashbacks, "something really horrible is about to happen."

The man started speaking after Robin laughed at his laugh again, "You know, when you laugh you can be happy." Robin asked why and he just told her to accept it, "When you're happy, laugh! Which also means if you laugh you'll be happy. Even though you're small, it looks like you're suffering a lot. Ya just need to laugh. When you're sad, just laugh."

She countered with, "If I laugh when I'm in pain, I'll look like an idiot."

"She's got that right," Usopp nodded.

"That's not true," he laughed again, "test it out if you want."

She seemed hesitant, but then the two of them just started laughing the same way. "Dereshi, Dereshi shi shi shi shi..." The memory faded away and all the little happy memories vanished as the world became dark again.

The long memory wasn't over yet, in fact it didn't seem to be wavering like any of the ones before it. They guessed they had Luffy to thank for that one. Without a conscious Robin to fight off her memories, they were flowing easily.

"Looks like you just made her job easier," Franky growled as more wisps started to form around them.

"Better than forcing her to watch these," Nami cast a look over to the unconscious woman who was shaking in her sleep. "Robin!" She called and ran over.

"What's happening to her?" Usopp asked Chopper who ran over to check her out. She was wriggling around on the ground with a scared look on her face.

"Haha, hehehe," the girl's shrill voice started laughing at them. "I've never had an enemy fall asleep in here before, but it looks like she still has to watch these memories." Luffy's face dropped as he thought he'd helped her. "The only thing you managed to do is make it so you can't comfort her while she watches."

The rubber man's face widened in shock and he clenched his fists as hard as he could before punching in all directions aimlessly. "Stop it!" Sanji kicked his head into the ground. "You already hurt Robin, don't go attacking randomly or you'll risk hitting Nami-San." No one felt like correcting him and saying that the captain could hurt them as well.

"It's alright Luffy-san, you were just trying to help," Brook assured seeing the strained look on their captain's face.

"This is so stupid," Zoro muttered looking at the memories of the giant around them. It pained him to think about what was going to happen to the man if Robin's happiest memories had to do with him.

"It's like he's her only friend," Usopp whispered.

"He is," Nami said and he looked at her. She was fearing the same as Zoro and just continued grimly, "This is painful to watch. Everything I've seen of Robin's life so far has been painful, but the happy memories seemed almost as bad."

Brook added, "I do not believe she owns any other clothes either." They all looked around at the three memories around them where Robin was sitting or talking with Saul. At once they all noticed that she wore the same dress every day.

Nami gasped and cursed whoever that aunt was that didn't clothe her niece.

"So you're leaving already?" The small girl sounded sad as the giant had just finished his raft. That memory overtook the others and spread out around them.

"Come on," Saul urged, "don't make such a sad face." He smiled to raise her spirits, "Come to think of it, I was planning on hoisting a flag. I guess I'll be here a bit longer." Both of them started the annoying laugh that somehow made the crew watching smile and feel guilty at the same time.

The memory continued as Saul sat down and they looked over the water. "Say," he began, "have you ever wanted to go out to sea Robin?"

"Yeah, but my mom has been really busy with her archaeological research." The crew was stunned to see Robin talking so openly and with such a wide smile. Even when they talked to her and she laughed or smiled with them normally, there was always a darkness hidden in her expression. That darkness wasn't present in the black haired girl's eyes and they weren't ready to see what put it there. "One day when she comes back, I'll get her to take me along with her."

"She's always been the most quiet about her past," Nami stated. Sanji took a long drag of his cigarette to sooth his rising nerves.

"There are things about ourselves we don't want others to see," Zoro started, his usual response to the memories.

"Sure, I'm fine with keeping 'some' things a secret," Usopp agreed slowly, "but for her it seems like it's 'everything.' That can't be healthy to ignore everything that's happened to you," the others were worried about their friend but the memory was still going in front of them.

"... didn't you say you don't even remember her face?"

"Yeah," the girl answered with a sadder look, "but she's still my mom. I miss her."

Nami and Usopp looked at each other and the two of them gave each other a look of understanding. They were the two on the crew who actually grew up with a mom, only for her to be torn away. The two felt closer after watching each other's memories.

Robin kept talking and again the atmosphere of the Straw Hats got tense, "You know Saul, there's a hundred year gap in history that we have no record of."

"Yeah, it's called the Void Century. It interests me but the Government forbids studying it." The giant answered.

"I heard my mom is traveling the world to study it. Don't tell anyone though. It's a crime." By the look on Saul's face, that last bit of information shocked him.

"That's a common reaction for the bombshell she just dropped on him." Sanji said.

"After she said she wants to travel with her, she's pretty much admitted she's a world felon." Franky sighed.

"Don't tell me she's seeking out the Poneglyphs?!" Saul exclaimed in a quieter tone even though no one was around.

"You know about them?" Robin asked.

"That's not important," he started to whisper, "listen Robin. You can't talk about this around people. Especially since your mom is out looking for th..." His eyes popped twice as big as normal as he examined the girl before him.

"What? What happened?" Chopper asked as the tension in the air kept rising. Saul's face was sweating profusely and he started to shake nervously.

"Robin," he croaked out and the Straw Hats knew that something was wrong. "Do you know your mother's name?"

With a proud look on her face, Robin answered, "Olivia." Saul's mouth opened wide and he looked like he couldn't breath. "Her name is Nico Olivia."

The giant fell back in shock and shook the ground. "I'm guessing he knows the name." Brook said softly.

"If she was studying the Poneglyphs she is probably an infamous criminal," Franky agreed.

"That's not it," Sanji stated and Luffy turned to him. So far the captain had been watching silently but he asked the chef what he was talking about. "The look on Saul's face, he knows that woman personally." He could only imagine how beautiful Robin's mother was, but it wasn't the time to talk about that even if a trickle of blood dripped from his nose.

"Wait!" Saul had gotten up and was leaning in to Robin's face as the girl sat on a small cliff. "Does that mean this is... the island of Ohara?"

"Yeah." Robin nodded.

Everyone except for Brook froze at the name. They all remembered Robin's cries from the top of the Tower of Justice. How she pleaded with Spandam not to use the Buster Call. How her entire home island was wiped off every map in existence.

"Ohara," Chopper whispered and looked around the island.

Confirming their nervous reactions, Saul jumped up and shouted, "This is bad!"

Brook had heard of the island before but as he saw his crewmates' reactions he asked, "What about Ohara? It's the island with the largest library in the world. I should have known that this was where Robin-San was from."

Nobody responded to him so he asked again and Sanji turned his head a little, "Ohara no longer exists." He turned back and couldn't see he confused reaction on Brook's face before realizing what that meant.

"The government can be very cruel," Franky stated though he was shaking in fear of what they were going to witness.

Saul kept shouting how bad his luck was that he drifted all the way to Ohara. He looked like he finally absorbed the information and needed to act, "There's no time! Robin," he bent down to the confused girl still kneeling on the rock face.

"Yeah?" the innocent girl responded.

"This may come as a shock to you, but listen carefully. There are almost certainly Marine battleships on their way here!" He called out.

"Wait," Usopp shouted, "you mean the Buster Call was already activated?"

"Her home was in West Blue, maybe it takes a while for them to get there." Nami offered though it wasn't convincing and everyone was still confused and hoping the memory would be over quickly.

"The Marines? Why?" Robin asked.

"To eliminate the island's scholars," Saul told her and her eyes went wide.

"Eli-minate?" Robin asked as the word set in.

"If you really are a scholar..." the giant pleaded.

"No way."

"Then under no circumstances..." He continued.

"No way."

"Can you tell the government!"

"You're lying!" Robin shouted and Nami could only think about how it felt when the Doctor back home told her she had to run away to save her mom. She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"It's the truth, I wouldn't lie to you! Hurry, go into town and make sure nothing's up! There's a chance your mother is back," all the anger and denial on Robin's face vanished at the sound of that.

"M-mom?" She asked as the memory began to fade again but the walls of the place held together.

The next memory started coming in and everyone in the town of the island was in a panic. "It's starting," Zoro said grimly.

They were all running the opposite direction of Robin who was running towards the giant tree.

_ 'There's a woman running around with a rifle!'_

_ 'Get away!'_

The little girl they were getting pulled behind completely ignored the person running past her, but every member of her crew stared at the woman with huge eyes. She had long white hair, but her face and especially eyes made such an uncanny resemblance that it was obvious.

"Robin's mom," Nami gasped.

"She really is gorgeous," Sanji stated with a wide smile that no one was in the mood for.

The mother and daughter ran past each other and the crew was shocked they didn't stop. "Looks like they don't even recognize each other." Luffy stated confused.

"I doubt my parents would recognize me if they saw me now," Franky said.

Brook agreed, "I doubt mine would either." The others sweat-dropped at the two.

They kept following the girl until she got to the tree and ran right inside. She was panting heavily and the crew looked around to see all the scholars rushing around. Something was definitely wrong.

"What is it Robin?" Professor Clover called to the door in surprise.

"Was my mother here?" She asked between breaths and everyone in the room gasped.

"Oh she was definitely there alright," Sanji said, their faces giving it away.

Clover was the only one who kept his composure, "What do you mean? You know your mother is far from Ohara!" He looked to be thinking deeply about something, "What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"

She seemed to believe him and bowed her head in disappointment. "Oh yeah," she remembered, "I heard there are Marine battleships on their way here. They're coming after all the scholars!"

"Is there a big commotion in town?" The man asked knowingly, "It's not because of battleships. It's just a Government ship, it just arrived here." He walked up to Robin and bent down to eye-level with her. "They're performing the strictest inspection yet."

"Maybe Saul was wrong," Chopper offered.

"I doubt it," Zoro said. "It feels like this is the end."

"No need to be so blunt," Nami whispered.

"We're going to find out one way or another," Zoro stated angrily. "Might as well not fool ourselves. If you don't want to watch then look away."

The Professor was still lecturing her, "... If someone from the government talks to you, whatever you do, don't let them find out your an archaeologist. Nobody would ever suspect someone so young to be a scholar. Got it?"

Before she could answer, a man was thrown through the doorway. Everyone turned and stared at the Government officials in black suits barging in the door.

"Stop what you're doing! Everyone put your hands up and come outside!" A man shouted after barging in with his gun raised.

"Do you have to be so violent?" Clover asked. The tall man had light green hair sticking out above his head, to either side, and down his beard all equal in length.

"We suspect this Oharan facility of being used for the high crime of deciphering Poneglyphs!" No one in the room reacted and they were much better at keeping this secret than the shock of hearing Robin ask about her mother. "We are here to conduct a thorough investigation."

Clover and the official kept talking and the crew stared at young Robin's scared face. She seemed so terrified but also angry that no one was telling her anything.

"That has to be frustrating," Zoro said as everyone started ignoring her and all the adults were being escorted out the door. Robin only followed because she wanted to, not because the men in black ordered her to.

All the scholars were gathered up on the lawn in front of the huge tree. Robin walked with the guards and stood next to them as all the men and women she knew were forced to sit in a cramped circle.

She turned her head towards the town where people were frantically running around.

"I can't believe they were researching ways to destroy the world!'

"What's happening?" Usopp asked nervously, his anxiety rising by the second. Everything was moving very fast and the island looked like it was on the breaking point.

Citizens were running all over the place and a crying father shouted next to his sobbing son, "Where's the evacuation ship?!"

"Hurry to the western shore!"

The old man started speaking to the girl standing next to him. "Robin, it looks like there's an evacuation ship. I have no idea what they're planning anymore. You should go," he urged while making it sound casual so the officials wouldn't suspect anything of her.

"No! There aren't any nice people there!" She exclaimed and the crew felt bad for her yet again. All she wanted were friends and people to care for her but everyone she liked were getting arrested. "I'm staying here with you guys!"

"Robin!" He urged louder.

"But I'm no diff..."

He cut her off before she could incriminate herself, "Just go!"

The crew paid the man a silent thanks that he protected Robin there and was nice to her when the rest of the island seemed to hate her.

"Hahahaha," Franky's ear twitched at the annoying laughter and he turned his head to see three men approaching over a hill.

"He looks familiar," Chopper stated with a confused look.

The man in the middle of the three had a long coat on behind him and looked to be in charge. "Nicely done gentlemen."

"Just doing our jobs Director!" All the officials chanted.

"Director?" Nami said slowly, "wait, he couldn't be..."

"No," Franky said and shook his head. "That's not Spandam, but more likely his father, Spandine."

The man started talking about the white haired woman on one of his subordinate's shoulders. "I'm surprised," he laughed. Everyone there got annoyed by his voice already, "there are some fearsome beasts out there in the woods."

It was the same woman they saw before and the crew knew it was Robin's mom. She looked battered and beaten and they could all figure out what happened.

Sanji took a look at the men next to the Director. "That's the previous generation huh?"

"Of what?" Brook asked.

"CP9," Zoro answered, "the Government's personal assassins." The two men looked very powerful compared to the others around them.

Showing off a bit of that strength, the man holding Olivia tossed her up in the air effortlessly with one hand and she fell face first in the dirt. Sanji couldn't help himself and dove forward, kicking the person in front of him to no avail and shouting in anger about it.

"She almost killed me," the director laughed, not sounding like he cared much. "Listen up," he shouted at the cowering scholars who couldn't look at their comrade, "this person is an escaped prisoner. The rest of this woman's crew was already exterminated for the crime of deciphering the ancient writings."

"That's gotta hurt," Franky muttered and they all watched the horrified and pained expressions of the scholars trying to hide their connections.

"However," the annoying Government leader continued, "we don't know who their leader is. Could you all make it easy for me and admit you know her?"

"Did he really think that would work?" Zoro asked annoyed.

"Robin," Clover could sense this was escalating very fast and he spoke quickly, "get to the evacuation ship. Now!"

The woman on the ground lifted her head and Robin saw the movement. Everyone held their breath as the two of them made eye contact. Then the black haired girl turned away and blushed.

A few of them felt like saying 'Awww' because of the cute timid side of Robin, but the tension in the air was so thin they could cut it with a knife.

Suddenly the tension broke as the woman staring at her daughter began to cry and a huge explosion shook the ground. They all looked for the source of it and wound up looking right at the Tree of Omniscience that the scholars were trying so hard to protect.

"What the hell!"

"What do they think that library is?!"

As the scholars voiced their complaints, a Den Den Mushi began to ring in the arrogant man's coat. He picked it up, "Hello, is this the Director?"

"Yeah it's me."

No one could breath as the voice on the other end spoke, "We found something. There's a secret underground room. There's a large stone that looks like a Poneglyph, and research documents clearly containing the ancient writing."

"Shit," Sanji muttered.

"They're screwed," Franky said in a sympathetic voice. They all knew what they were getting into, but he couldn't help but feel bad for the peaceful scholars.

"Alright, nice job," the Director hung up and glared at the archaeologists with a wide smile on his face. "Ahahaha," he laughed evilly and it was obvious who the real demons were in this situation. "Well now Oharan Scholars! You're all officially good as dead!" He threw his arms out to the sides and laughed even harder.

None of the people around him reacted as he continued to shout. "It's really a shame. On this day, all the world's best archaeologists lost their lives!"

"He doesn't know that!" Usopp shouted.

"Yeah, maybe someone will save them," Chopper agreed hopefully.

"What a let down," the man said with a sigh, "my task here is finished. Inform the Gourosei," he stated and half of the Straw Hats dropped their jaws.

"The g-g-Gourosei?" Usopp whimpered and took a step back.

Chopper stared at his friend wondering who they were. Nami looked down at the reindeer, "You don't know?"

Luffy seemed just as confused and Zoro did as well. Brook had a stricken look on his face and whispered, "Those five individuals rule the world. That's all I know. They are the representatives of the World Government, but they control even the World Nobles."

"The Celestial Dragons?" Zoro asked with a hint of disgust in his voice. Then he realized just how powerful these people must be if they could boss around those snobs.

"It's impossible to think that such powerful people were involved with this." Usopp stated, "Just how dangerous could a group of peaceful scholars be to them."

Franky sighed, "Knowledge is power. Whatever reason the Government has for keeping the Poneglyphs a secret, it doesn't just have to do with the Ancient Weapons." He thought about the Pluton Blueprints he burned and shuddered at the thought of what could possibly be worse than that.

Young Robin was pleading the whole time with the Professor. She didn't want all the scholars to die. "...just for reading ancient writing? Why?"

"You stupid kid!" The director shouted at her. "They were trying to resurrect an ancient weapon in order to kill countless people!"

"She knows better than anyone that that is a lie," Chopper cried as the little girl seemed more and more confused as this went on.

"At least she got to the evacuation ship. Those scholars really saved her life by not implicating her with them." Nami stated and most of the others agreed.

Franky stayed quiet however and remembered the bounty poster that Tom showed him when he was younger. The poster was of Nico Robin exactly as she looked right now, and he said that she was the most dangerous person alive.

"That's not true," she shouted. "Nobody was doing that!"

Clover was begging now, "Please stop Robin. You won't get anywhere with that errand boy."

Spandam's father shouted furiously at the name he was called, "What was that!?"

"Is the weapon really what the Government is afraid of?" Professor Clover asked and everyone except for Luffy and Zoro shuddered.

"I don't know if we should listen to this," Nami suggested. It was starting to feel a lot like Whiskey Peak when Vivi let slip that Crocodile led Baroque Works.

"I," Usopp started, "I don't think it will be as bad because only we'll know about it and no one will know that we know." Clover looked like he was about to say something that the World Government didn't want anyone knowing so he was questioning whether or not to hold his ears.

"And me, hehehe," a little girl's voice shouted over the sky. "This is getting pretty interesting actually." They could hear a munching sound and it sounded like she was eating popcorn.

Luffy's stomach grumbled and he became only angrier that they were stuck there still.

One of the CP9 agents behind Spandine held the receiver to the Den Den Mushi and said that he got through. Clover was now on his feet and interrupted the Director who was about to speak with them.

"Before I die, let me speak with the Gorousei- the top men of the world." Without waiting to be told to continue, he spoke towards the phone the officials were holding up. "We Oharans have been collecting research for ages. It's our dream! I would like to present our theory on the Void Century to them."

"I don't know if I should cover my ears or not... Although I don't have any ears!" Brook shouted.

"What nonsense," Spandine responded with a chuckle.

While the officials talked to each other, Clover spoke in a hushed tone. "Hurry and get out of here Robin. Hearing what I'm going to say is a crime."

The group of people sat still and Robin looked horrified as the officials ran around and pointed all their guns at them. "I really hope she doesn't see them all die," Nami whispered, fearing the worst for her friend.

At least when Arlong attacked her village, only her mother was killed. Everyone else was allowed to live, despite many injuries. Here... no one was going to make it. "Why doesn't she hurry to the ship already?" Chopper asked while biting down on his nails.

Over the Snail Phone, a voice said, "Is that so?" He sounded like a very, very old man and it was surprising that the person speaking was one of five who controlled the World Government.

Spandam's father answered, "Yes. This is a capital crime. We've gotten a hold of all the information we needed, we're only awaiting your orders."

A new man's voice spoke, "It can't be helped. This is truly a deplorable result," and it really sounded like he regretted the situation they were all in. "But they've broken the world's law. We can't let them get away with this."

Clover interrupted the man and the Straw Hats had to admire him. Standing up to the top members of the Government he cut in, "I've had enough with the small talk, Gourosei."

Spandine shouted that he was out of line for speaking to such powerful people. "You're talking to the people holding the highest political power in the world!"

The man on the line didn't seem as upset and spoke, "So you're the authority of archaeology, Professor Clover of Ohara. You are a great contributor to the world's cultural heritage. I know your name well." There was respect in his voice even as he said, "To think a man like you would stray from the righteous path."

"The past belongs to all mankind," Clover responded. "Nobody has any right, to try and stop the desire to know the untold history."

The crew was pulled a little away from the Professor, but they were still watching just like memory Robin. She was standing to the side of the circle next to an abandoned building and poking her head out to watch.

The Gourosei argued, "If someone reads the Poneglyph, the possibility to revive the ancient weapons will arise, bringing a great deal of danger to the world."

"Sounds like something Baka-berg would say," Franky muttered hearing the same words from his friend's mouth over and over again.

Sounding even more like Iceberg, the old man on the line continued, "Even if the case is you don't have any ill intentions, if someone desires to use them to a villainous end, the situation will be the same."

Clover replied, "Whatever the past may be, as long as it's history crafted by the hands of mankind, we have the responsibility to accept it all."

"Sounds like something Robin would say," Chopper said.

"Guess we found her biggest influence." Sanji agreed and watched the small girl's scared face as she watched the scholars.

Something was bothering him, more than the fact the scholars were about to be killed. If Robin did escape, which they knew she did since she was still alive, then how did the Government find out about her? It bugged him and he couldn't shake the sense of dread he felt.

The Professor kept talking, "If one is able to understand this without fear, countermeasures will be possible no matter what happens."

"That is an idealistic argument," a man over the Den Den Mushi argued.

Zoro bowed his head and had to agree with the men, but that didn't mean he sided with them. It was an idealistic way to look at it, but the point stood that the scholars had every right to study it.

Clover narrowed his eyes, "I wonder about that. Isn't the idea of it being impossible simply suited to your purpose?"

The men on the other end seemed surprised but Clover wasn't going to slow down and give them time to respond. "Of all the truths remaining in the world nowadays, the ones we want to know the most are the engraved messages of the Poneglyphs and the reason of their existence."

"This is it," Brook said nervously, still on the fence about whether or not he wanted to know. None of them could look away and listened as the old man began to speak.

_'Why did people of the past carve their messages on hard stone in an attempt to transmit them to the future? They engraved history on unbreakable stones and dispersed them throughout the world. Wasn't it because they feared having their message destroyed if they were to put it on paper or books?'_

"Destroyed?" Chopper asked while biting his nails even more and curling up small.

"In brief," he continued, "This is evidence that the people who left this behind had a clear enemy."

"What are you trying to say Professor Clover?" Someone asked from over the phone, another old man by the sound of it.

"If we consider the other possibility of these people being defeated by some enemy, then that enemy should have survived and stayed in the history. Oddly enough, eight hundred years ago, just as the Void Century was coming to a close, the organization known as the World Government was created."

Time seemed to slow down and every Straw Hat except for Luffy opened their mouths wider and wider. "What?" Sanji asked, wondering if what the man was implying was right.

"If the enemy of the fallen people was today's World Government, then we can come to a conclusion, that the Void Century is an inconvenient history that was erased by the hands of the World Government." Clouds covered the sky and cast a darkness over the area. All the officials looked like they didn't know any of this and some looked nervous that they were hearing such information. "By reading historical documents from that time and by deciphering a certain number of Poneglyphs, we noticed the existence of a country before too long. What these texts revealed to us was the shape of a powerful country. It once took pride in its enormous strength, but all information on that country has been completely erased. It's very probable that when they realized the deeds of an allied nation, named the World Government, they carved the truth on stones in order to entrust their ideas to the future. These are the Poneglyphs that remain in the world to this day."

"I see," a Gourosei stated, "this is an audacious hypothesis."

Clover wasn't deterred, "The ancient weapons will indeed coerce the world. But more importantly, won't the existence and ideas of that country, being revealed with the true history, be even more of a menace to you World Government?" Now even Spandine seemed nervous as Clover knew a lot.

"This is ridiculous, can something like that even happen?" Usopp asked.

Franky was shocked but nodded his head, "If the Government wanted to, they could have erased every last bit of information about the Country."

"But what could knowing about them have changed?" Chopper asked.

"Just the idea that the Government destroyed them is enough for them to want to stop others from finding out about it," Sanji stated.

Professor Clover was only making it worse for himself. "We must make clear the nature of this menace, but what holds the key to solving everything is the name of that once flourishing country..."

"KILL HIM!" A voice shouted over the snail phone and Spandine obliged. He pulled out a pistol and fired, everyone shocked at how fast the pin dropped. They didn't know what could be so bad about learning the name of the country, but it had the most powerful men in the world freaking out about it.

Clover's body snapped back like when they watched Bellemere and everything started to slow down. Robin's eyes went wide and she screamed as the man's body spurted blood out the front and back of his chest. "PROFESSOR!"

A few of them heard over the Snail Phone while the other scholars were panicking a Gourosei member speak five words that made them shake. "Ohara has, learnt too much." Whoever was on the other side of the line didn't seem to like what he was doing one bit but he still gave the order. "Give the order to attack."

"No! They can't kill them," Chopper shouted.

"They're the World Government," Sanji took a puff of his light, "they can do whatever they want."

"You mustn't let anyone escape," the voice ordered the officials.

Robin was crying and running up to the fallen professor, but Spandine reached into his coat and pulled out a different Snail Phone. "Then with this Golden Den Den Mushi that Admiral Sengoku entrusted unto me, I'll engage the Buster Call!" He spun and pressed down on the button on top. "Take care of this."

The scholars seemed to know that something was coming and the Straw Hats knew all too well. "The Buster Call," Usopp remembered the bridge and the entire island of Enies Lobby burning around them. It was like Hell.

"Robin, hurry to the evacuation ship," the man urged, now on his last breaths.

"No! I don't want to be alone," she shouted.

"Don't say silly things at such a time," as they continued to beg her to leave, the scholars noticed that the giant tree had burst into flames from the earlier explosion.

"YOW! That Adam wood is more valuable than anything!" Franky shouted knowing how rare the material he built the Sunny out of was.

"I don't think that's why they're panicking," Chopper growled. "All those priceless books are going to get burned."

_ 'What is this for World Government?' _The scholars shouted.

_ 'Weren't our heads enough!?'_

Spandine couldn't care less and said that the earlier fire must have started it. The scholars kept shouting and the officials pointed their guns at them but the Director grimaced, _'Don't, it's alright. There's no need for guns anymore. Government officials retreat.'_

"They're just leaving?" Brook asked.

"You don't know what the Buster Call is like," Nami said with a shiver. "We only saw a part of it, but the entire island we were on was covered in fire and explosions."

All the scholars ran back towards the tree to try and put out the flames. The officials ran the other direction except for the CP9 agents and their leader.

The people there couldn't believe what was happening, but Robin seemed the most distraught as she was just a child. She didn't know why all this was happening, but she stared in horror at the burning library and could hear screams coming from inside as the scholars tried saving the precious books.

"We're taking that woman along," the Director said. His subordinate grabbed her by the arm and picked her up. "There's still information only she knows. We can't have her die here," while they walked her off, Robin stared in their direction and didn't move an inch.

"Why isn't Robin running to the escape ship?" Chopper asked. He wanted her to escape as soon as possible so this memory could end.

"You heard her," Luffy said in a serious voice, "she didn't want to be alone."

Franky nodded, "Those other people were nothing but nasty to her."

The Straw Hats were confused as the memory started to twist and something appeared in the blue sky above them. It was another hazy memory being pulled together by a few stray wisps. It was blurry but they could all make out tiny hands reaching forward and grabbing the blurry face, "Mama, mama!"

Eight year old Nico Robin started to recognize who the person getting dragged away was. Ignoring the pleas of the few scholars behind her, she stepped towards the agents. With tears in her eyes she kept walking and her breath became more staggered. She got several yards away from the scholars before calling out, "Are you, my mother?"

The group walking away from her stopped and the woman with white hair began to shake. It was such a sad scene that Chopper had to turn away and Franky began bawling at the sight of it. They'd all forgotten the crazy knowledge of the world history they learned and were only focused on their friend's suffering.

More little memories were being formed above their heads near the happy one of her mother bouncing her in her arms.

_ 'Monster!'_

_ 'She was thrown away by her mother you know!'_

_ 'Thats my daughter's dress! How dare you wear it?!'_

_ 'Im sorry Aunt, I just wanted to try it on...'_

_ 'She eats a lot, even though she's just a freeloader.'_

All the horrible memories were followed by one of the girl just sitting alone in the woods, crying softly with no one around.

The memories faded so only the young Robin remained and she called out again as the agents kept walking, "Are you my mother?"

"What is it? You had a kid?" The nasty Government man asked.

Olivia didn't turn around but they all heard her say, "No. I'm sorry. I think you have, the wrong person."

"Ha, weirdo brat," Spandine mocked before strutting away. "Let's get going."

Robin had tears streaking down her face on either side and liquid was dripping down her lips from her nose too.

Chopper, Usopp, and Nami all began to cry when Robin shouted out, "I'm Robin! I've grown a lot! Don't you remember me? I've always been waiting for you to come back."

"Oh man," Usopp said with tears in the corners of his eyes.

Sanji wanted to tell that he'd make the bastard who was making her cry pay, but it was another beautiful woman and he couldn't do that. Instead he just glared at Spandam's dick-of-a-dad and hoped the bastard died a painful death.

"Are you... really not... my mother?" Olivia couldn't handle it anymore and dropped down to her knees. "Someday," Robin said between tears, "I wanted to walk together with you, while holding hands..."

Zoro thought back to the only other two times he was this sad. One was when he received the Wado Ichimonji, and the other was watching Going Merry die. Now he wasn't a sentimental person, but it was impossible to watch Robin's tears without feeling your heart get torn apart.

Luffy was already letting tears drop though he stayed silent, stunning his first mate standing next to him. He didn't know what the captain was thinking, but watching Robin's tears became contagious and soon Zoro realized he was the only one of them without water in his eyes or already letting it stream down his face.

"I studied as hard as I could and became an archaeologist! I can read the Poneglyph too!"

"No!" Sanji, Franky, Zoro, Nami, and Brook shouted at the same time.

"She just signed her own death warrant!" Usopp shouted as Chopper began sobbing harder.

Clover yelled at her to stop and Spandine was shocked to hear she could read them. "So let me stay with you! Mom!"

Suddenly the ground shook and then began to constantly rumble and the Straw Hats looked around. The grassy hills around them were shaking and huge explosions burst out all over the island.

One cannonball flew right over their heads and slammed into the Tree of Omniscience, knocking down some of the standing archaeologists near it.

"Please," Robin shouted over the blast, "don't leave me alone again!"

A few explosions occurred right behind Spandine and he panicked. The two CP9 agents proved their skill by not even faltering, only casting a small glance at the explosion that happened next to them. _'What the Hell! We still haven't left the island! Do they want to kill us?'_

As if answering his question, an explosion blasted him backwards from a ball that landed in front of him.

Spandine told the other agents to memorize Robin's face and not let her get off the island like the scholars. Another explosion hit and he panicked, telling them to forget Olivia and to just run away. _'If we stay here we'll be killed to. Our first priority is my life.'_

The crew wasn't even paying attention to him anymore and all watched as Robin walked sadly up to her mother. She frowned and fell to her knees in front of the crying woman with white hair.

Olivia seemed happy now that she didn't have to hide it any longer. Robin grabbed her hand and whimpered with tears in her eyes, "I've wanted to do this, for a long time."

"Robin!" Olivia pulled her daughter in for a tearful hug while explosions continued to blow up the fields around them. The occasional cannonball would drop and make a ball of fire erupt near them, but so far they were safe.

"Mom!"

"What horrible circumstances for a reunion," Brook lamented.

Clover bowed his head, "It's my fault. Is it true you can read the Poneglyphs? If I had paid closer attention..."

"I'm sorry," Robin apologized to the bleeding man. "I wanted to be able to read them no matter what..."

She sounded ashamed in what she'd done, but her mother pulled her away from the hug and looked her in the eyes. "I'm really amazed, that you managed to accomplish something as great as this." Some of the crew members had calmed down and were wiping their tears as they watched the semi-happy reunion surrounded by fire and explosions. "You did your best and studied a lot. This isn't something anyone can do."

"It's something no one can do," Nami whispered.

"She's the only one alive who can read them," Franky added.

"You're amazing Robin!" Olivia pet her daughter's head and she seemed so shocked to hear her mother's words.

"She really is," two voices said at once and Zoro and Sanji glared at each other. It was amazing for the two of them to agree on something, but to say the same thing at the same time, now that was unheard of. In any other situation, the other crew members would have made a big deal out of it, but they couldn't look away from the archaeologist mother and daughter pair.

The daughter was crying hard and it made them forget it was a memory for a second. They all just wanted to walk over and comfort the girl, though her mother seemed to be doing that already. Years of suffering were pouring out as her mother spoke soothing words in her ear.

"Olivia! If you can manage to sneak on the evacuation ship with Robin, you two can escape the island!" Clover called.

"Oh good," Chopper said, wiping away his tears. "Her mom's going to make it."

Someone wanted to remind him that she was the only one who could read Poneglyphs so that couldn't be, but they didn't have it in their hearts. He'd have it broken to him in a few seconds.

All of a sudden, a huge form burst from the smoke and called, "Robin, so you were here? I've been searching for ya!"

"Saul!" Robin shouted.

"Saul?" Olivia asked surprised that the giant was there. "Why are you on this island?"

"This must be some kind of fate," he replied. "My ship sunk and I was saved on the beach by Robin. More importantly, this situation is really bad. Ya gotta leave this island quickly!"

She paused for a second and then shoved her daughter forward, "Take care of Robin. Help my daughter escape from the island at all costs!"

"No! What about you mom?" Robin asked fearfully. "Won't you stay with me?"

"Why isn't she going?" Chopper asked sadly.

She had a determined look in her eyes, "I still have something to do here."

"Mom! I don't want to be separated from you! I just met you," she tried holding on to her mother's shoulders as tight as she could.

_'Robin,' _she started in a soft voice_, 'as a scholar of Ohara you must understand.'_ The whole crew could hear the shouting from inside the Tree and suddenly knew what she was planning. _'History is the people's treasure.' _Hearing that it was their treasure, Luffy understood why they were all willing to risk their lives for it. _'It'll certainly illuminate the future you're about to live. However, you must teach the next generation, the history you've obtained from the past, otherwise it'll disappear.'_

_ 'Put out the fire!'_

_'Save the books!' _The shouting was louder than the explosions still rocking the land near them.

As Olivia kept talking to her daughter, the crew members looked around and could barely comprehend the amount of destruction in such a short amount of time.

Five more cannonballs dropped leading a line of explosions up to the Tree of Omniscience where two became direct hits and lit more of the trunk on fire. _"...even if Ohara is destroyed, we can't give up on the future that you'll be living in."_

_"I don't get it."_

_"You'll understand someday,"_ her mother said.

_"NO!"_ The sudden scream shook the Straw Hats and they all jumped, turning around and seeing the unconscious adult Robin writhing around on the floor. _"MOTHER! No,"_ she started to whimper and calm back down and they felt so bad for her.

_"I wish we could help her,"_ Nami whispered and Luffy took it personally, getting more angry at himself for knocking her out.

_"I thought she wouldn't have to..."_ He stopped as a hand clapped him on the shoulder and he saw it was Sanji.

_"She'll understand,"_ he said, _"even if I'm pissed at you, we all understand."_

Saul grabbed Robin gently and picked her up. _"No, I want to stay with you!"_ The girl shouted and reached down for her mother that she couldn't reach.

The giant started running away and the crew was dragged, watching Olivia disappear in the distance. _"Mom! MOM!"_ Both Robins shouted at the same time.

Her mom was already out of sight when they heard her shout one last thing, _"LIVE ROBIN!"_

As the giant ran through the woods with a crying Robin, the Straw Hats were hoping the memory would end soon. "He just had to get her to the evacuation ship." Nami said and she seemed concerned for the big man. "I just hope he can make it back to his raft after that."

The others felt the same way and watched glumly as Robin pounded on Saul's chest. _"Saul! Go back, please,"_ she begged.

_"Impossible,"_ he said, _"I can't do that. Be proud Robin!"_ he told the crying eight year old, _"Yer mom is great! Ohara is great!"_ The giant was running down the hill covered in explosions and fires. The smoke filled the air so he could barely see where he was running. _"Someday you'll have to pass on this island's history Robin!"_

Nami thought for a second, "I guess that's kind of what she's doing right now... even if it is against her will." She felt lousy for watching her friend's memories like this. For all the others, they didn't like it, but were able to cope and show them the memory. For Robin, her memories were hidden not just from them, but from herself. She never let herself get too emotional because those memories would rise and Nami understood that now.

_"Ohara fought against the world!"_ Saul shouted. _"Ah now they're targeting me!"_ He pulled Robin down and cupped her with his hands but the rest of the crew watched a cannonball hit him directly in the face and exploded.

_'Saul!' _Robin shouted.

From the Marine ship close to the shore, the Straw Hats heard people shouting.

_ 'A direct hit!'_

_ 'Im sorry Vice-Admiral!'_

_ 'Don't apologize, he's helping the demons,' _the crew was startled at that.

"He's a Vice-Admiral!?" Franky shouted.

"Not anymore I'm guessing," Sanji stated.

_"I'm sorry Robin, that must've startled you,"_ Saul lowered her to the ground and put her down. _"Wait here for a sec,"_ he started running off.

"Uh, what's he doing?" The cyborg asked as Saul went running away from them.

"Saul-san!" Brook shouted.

"What's he..." Usopp's eyes as well as most of the crew's grew wide as the giant ran right up to the warship and grabbed it around the front.

_'Firing from the shore. What would they have done if they hit Robin!?' _He shouted angrily and his giant side showed with his strength as he pushed the ship off the shore. _'I got no idea what I'm doing. So I'll just protect my friend!'_

_ 'Stop it Vice-Admiral!'_

_ 'Get ready,' _he growled with blood dripping down his face, _'You won't get off easily having made me your enemy!' _With a force of superhuman strength, he lifted the front of the ship out of the water and then held the entire thing above his head so it was sticking up and down.

Their wide eyes popped out of their sockets when they saw the hidden reserve of strength the giant had. "Might not be from Elbaf, but forget what he said about 'peaceful clans.'" Nami whispered.

Sanji dropped the cigarette from his mouth and they all stared in shock at how easily he held the boat. Marines were falling off and screaming in terror but the Straw Hats only dropped their jaws further as Saul chucked the warship and it slammed straight into another one and split it in half.

"Ahhhh!" Chopper screamed as a cannonball exploded near them. The madness of the rampaging giant, along with the explosions from the Buster Call was too much for him. "Even though we're in a memory, it feels like the end of the world!"

_"Saul stop it! You'll die!"_ Robin shouted as explosions and gunfire slammed into the giant man.

He was hit in the face by another cannonball but all he could do was turn to Robin and shout, _"What are you doing? Get to the evacuation ship and leave the island!"_

The amount of explosions picked up and it literally took their breath away. "Robin-chan!" Sanji shouted and the girl started to run as a black ball full of gunpowder flew towards her. It exploded on the ground where she was standing and she fell to her stomach from the blast.

When she lifted her head from the ground, she saw the same horrifying sight that was sending chills down the crew's spines. All the trees were catching fire and the giant tree in the center of the island kept getting hit by more cannonballs.

"When Spandam said Ohara wasn't on the map any longer, I thought he meant..." Franky started and clenched his fists, "not this, I didn't know something like this was possible."

Robin was running and was now on her knees surrounded by burning everything. She started to cry harder and shouted in the sky, _"Mom!"_

"Get out of there Robin!" Nami called.

"Run Robin-san!" Brook shouted at the girl.

"Get out of there," Usopp yelled. As if she could hear him, she was back on her feet and staggering through the woods towards where the evacuation ship would be.

_"Go already!"_ Saul shouted into the distance._ "What was your mother's wish?"_

They all remembered what she said, and so did the girl who finally sucked it up and ran for the ship. It wasn't far and she reached it in no time. Someone on the ship shouted when it was about to take off, _"Wait somebody's coming!"_

She got there but didn't receive the welcome they were hoping for. _"Aren't you the monster?"_ One of the kids on board the boat asked. It was filled with people all looking down at her.

Another kid shouted, _"It's true!"_

Followed by, _"get away monster!"_

_"Don't shout such things,"_ A man scolded.

Another man argued, _"but that criminal Olivia in the papers, isn't that the criminal's daughter?!"_

"So what?" Luffy shouted at the people who were getting on his nerves. His brother's face flashed in front of him, "It doesn't matter who your parents are."

_"That's right,"_ someone agreed, _"if we let her on the ship we could be targeted too."_

The more prominent viewpoint was to save her and someone shouted, _"Don't be foolish."_

_"She's just a kid, hurry and pull her in."_

_**"Evacuation ship! Don't let that runt aboard!"**_ A loud annoying voice called from the water. The people holding out the rope for her stopped and the Marines on board kept them from continuing, _**"Even if she is just a kid, she's an archaeologist. She's one of this offensive's targets."**_

"Robin no," Nami whispered. How could they not let her on the ship? How else could she have escaped?

They all watched as Robin ran and Saul became furious with the CP9 Director. He started sprinting at them and all their attacks were useless on him until something stopped him in his tracks.

The crew didn't see what it was since they were getting pulled with Robin, but a huge chunk of cliff exploded and Saul fell to the ground.

The girl turned around and called her friend's name. The Straw Hats all looked as well just to freak out when they saw the person.

"Him?"

"It can't be."

"Aokigi?"

"It's all over."

Brook was confused and looked closer at the man, "Isn't he the fellow who helped us when we faced Z?"

"Yeah," Zoro said with worse memories of the man. "But before that he was a Marine Admiral."

"Kuzan," Saul whispered, knowing how he was taken down.

_"My my my, if the Buster Call was somehow hindered by a former Marine, wouldn't we look quite ridiculous?"_ The admiral stated.

"I though Vice-Admirals took charge of a Buster Call?" Nami questioned.

"Back then he probably wasn't an admiral yet," Sanji answered.

_"Kuzan, do you hold pride in this bombardment? Get back to yer senses!"_ Saul shouted.

"Looks like the two of them have some history," Zoro stated.

"Probably friends in the Navy before Saul deserted," Franky agreed.

_'This is weird! You must have noticed it too. That this is nothing more than an example. Just for that they're going to annihilate Ohara!'_

Sounding like an arrogant fool, Kuzan just replied, _'If it's for the betterment of the world, it can't be helped. Aren't the scholars breaking the law? What's called justice changes depending on where you stand. That's why I won't blame your justice.'_

"And I always thought Aokigi was a follower of Lazy justice," Sanji stated with a puff of his cigarette, "maybe it was this that changed his mind."

_"However, if you're going to get in our way... I won't just ignore it."_ He was wearing a blue hat and dark sunglasses so they couldn't read his eyes and determine what he was thinking right then.

Before any more words could pass between the former friends, a huge explosion shook everyone. Both Vice-Admirals, Robin, the Straw Hats, everyone turned slowly out towards the water where a huge fireball kept growing.

"That was..." Usopp started and his words got caught in his throat. Even Zoro dropped his jaw and his hand trembled in anger as he heard the screams of pain from the sea. The entire ship of citizens who had evacuated from the island went up in flames.

The shouts and screams of people burning alive echoed all around them. These sounds seemed louder than anything else like Robin's memory was strongest here. She could try to forget the smell, and the burns on her skin. She could forget the sight of the flames and the terrifying thoughts she had, but the screams of the children and all the others would stay with her forever.

_"The evacuation ship was blown up!"_ A marine shouted from the CP9 ship close-by. Even Spandine seemed horrified by the act of random cruelty, _"W-why?"_ He asked no one in particular.

Kuzan was staring out at the water with sweat on his face and could not believe what just happened.

_"It was a bombardment, from a Marine ship. It's from Vice-Admiral Sakazuki's ship!"_ They all looked out over the water at the smoking cannons and felt rage towards whoever this Vice-Admiral was.

"Sakazuki," Chopper growled, "I want to find that Vice-Admiral and do things to him," he tried to think of what he'd do to the man but all he knew is that it would be bad.

"He's not a Vice-Admiral anymore," Franky stated and they all looked at him.

"You mean he got promoted?" Nami asked. "Which one is he?"

"_Was_ he," Franky corrected. "The man who blew up that ship was none other than former Admiral Akainu," everyone stared at him shocked, "the new Fleet Admiral of the Marines."

"Akainu," Luffy growled and the disgust mixed with hatred in their captain's tone made them shiver.

Sanji had been fuming in rage and fire overtook his entire body. He was trembling and looked angrier than they'd ever seen him. "All the ladies on that ship! How dare he? How _DARE _he?!"

"All those innocent people for what?!" Chopper screamed. He got into his Heavy Point and roared up in the air in fury.

Nami thought she even heard a high pitched gasp from the sky above her. It was like even the girl watching found this memory horrible, and considering the things she'd been laughing at... "Robin," Nami started in a sad voice as tears came to her eyes. The others looked at her as she whispered, "the last survivor of Ohara."

Everyone looked so angry and sad that someone had to do something. Brook looked up at the horrified look on Kuzan's face. It seemed the future Admiral was as distraught as they were and never wanted it to go this far. The skeleton panned over to the shocked giant and called out in a joyful voice, "Look, Robin-san still has Saul-san! He must have saved her!"

"Y-yeah," Usopp said, anything to take his mind off of the slaughter her just witnessed.

_"Is this justice's way of doing things?"_ Saul shouted, directing his anger at Kuzan. The ice man prepared himself, _"Can you still hold pride in it after that?!"_ He rose a huge fist above the future Admiral.

As Aokigi jumped away he scowled, _"I didn't plan to overdo it like that total idiot!"_

"Do you think this is why he fought Akainu for the Fleet Admiral position?" Usopp asked and they all looked at him. "Jimbei said he couldn't stand a Navy run by Sakazuki, maybe this is what he was thinking about when they battled on Punk Hazard."

"Maybe," they thought it was a possibility but we focused on the memory and couldn't elaborate further.

Saul lifted Robin, _"Get away Robin. His strength is abnormal!"_

"There were warships all around them and the entire island is on fire! Where does he expect her to go!" Nami screamed in anguish. If they didn't know that Robin survived this, it would have looked like she had no chance.

The giant ran through the woods carrying her in front of him. They ignored the yells of the Marines behind them and followed those two.

Zoro looked back towards the burning tree in the center of the island. Sanji was thinking about the same thing, "Do you think any of the scholars escaped?" Instead of anyone answering his question, four huge explosions rocked the tree and they watched a huge branch fall off.

Someone screamed off in the trees to their right and they couldn't see who made the noise. It didn't sound good. Chopper held his ears as they were dragged with her and he couldn't get the images he'd seen out of his head. None of the others were faring much better although some were better at hiding it than others.

_"Ice Time Capsule!"_ A long trail of ice spread from Aokigi's hand and caught Saul by the left foot. His leg almost instantly froze and he tripped forward, being careful with Robin the whole time.

"No!" Luffy and Franky shouted.

"Saul-san!" Brook yelled.

Usopp and Chopper were hugging each other on the ground as the giant became partially covered in ice.

The young girl looked up at the orange haired giant's face, _"Saul are you alright?"_

_"Robin, run away,"_ he begged.

The crew heard steam rising and the heat of the fires was melting the ice right next to Aokigi. The steam around him and the flames glinting off of his sunglasses made him look horrifying. The man was already twice as tall as any normal person, but his powers and strength made him a monster.

Saul was panting hard, the ice stretching up his chest. It was clear the giant's time was over, but they didn't want to admit it. "Get up shitty giant! Help Robin escape!"

"You can do it Saul!"

"Saul!"

"Get up!"

Of course he couldn't hear their shouts and just pleaded with the little girl. _'Run as fast as you can. If you stay on the island, your life is gone for sure! Set out to sea on my raft.'_

_'What about you?' _Robin asked close to tears.

_'This is the end for me, I've been caught,' _he muttered.

"No! You can do it Saul!" Usopp shouted and ran forward trying to touch the giant. His hands went right through the image and he felt so helpless.

"He can still make it right?" Chopper asked and no one answered him. Instead they looked over where Kuzan was slowly walking towards them.

_"Go!"_ Saul commanded in a louder voice.

_"No! There's nobody at sea!"_ Robin screamed. Her face was covered in sweat from the nearby flames.

"Robin you have to run!" Nami shouted at her friend.

"Please escape," Usopp begged her.

"He's trying to save you Robin-san, go," Brook pleaded the girl. She seemed like she'd rather die than be alone.

"She's been pretty much by herself from the beginning, but now he's really the only one left," Zoro said in a grim tone. He didn't always have someone but he was different from her. The girl in front of them wanted someone, anyone to protect her, to be friends with her.

_"Listen well Robin,"_ Saul urged as his breathing picked up. _"You might be alone at the moment, but someday, you'll definitely find nakama!"_

The whole crew froze and looked to their Robin who was lying on the ground and breathing hard but looking a little calmer. The young girl in the vision had wide eyes and a quivering lip but she just asked, _'Nakama?'_

_'Yeah, the sea is vast. Someday without any doubt, nakama who will protect you will appear. No one in this world is born completely alone!' _He shouted and the tears in her eyes grew, still refusing to fall as she tried to be strong in front of her friend.

"Why did we have to take so long to find her?" Nami whispered.

"Twenty years she was alone," Brook said softly. "I spent fifty in the fog, but I was a grown man who had already lived a full life..."

"For an eight year old girl... to be completely alone in the world. Hunted by the Government for reasons she doesn't understand," Franky growled. Chopper was in tears again as they continued to stare at the memory.

Saul looked back a little and panicked at the sight of Aokigi getting closer. _"Run Robin! Without looking back!"_ He knew what was coming.

"At least he doesn't want Robin to see this," Sanji said, respecting the man for making her look away. "It would really scar her..." he saw that she wasn't turning and the newly lit cigarette in his mouth dropped.

_"When things are rough, do as I taught you. Laugh like this,"_ the man was grabbed from behind by Aokigi but he ignored it and kept looking forward at Robin. _"Dereshishishi derishi shi shi!"_

_"Saul look out!"_ She shouted at him.

"Look away!" Nami shouted, hoping the little girl wouldn't see this.

"I can't watch," Usopp turned away and pulled Chopper into a hug so the reindeer wouldn't have to watch it either.

Franky's eyes were spewing so much water that he could rust. Brook next to him had an arm around his shoulder and was also crying out his empty eye sockets.

"Turn Robin-chan!" Sanji shouted but he already had a good idea that she wouldn't.

_"Dereshishishi..."_

The Vice-Admiral whispered in a low tone, _"Ice Time."_ He looked to be hating every second of his job, but he pressed his hand against his former friend and ice started spreading across Saul's body.

_"Saul!"_ She begged the man who just kept laughing, tears in his eyes now.

His mouth was open mid-laugh when the ice reached his face. It was horrifying watching someone die like this and as the ice coated his face they all heard him say, _"Go meet the nakama who are certainly waiting for you, somewhere on the sea... Robin!"_ His voice faded out and the ice stopped spreading.

She stared at him for a few more seconds before the tears broke loose with her loud cries. _"Ahh ahah,"_ Robin started sobbing and turned around sprinting away into the trees.

"Saul!" Franky and Brook shouted.

Nami had come to like the giant so much in the few memories she'd seen of him. Now he was a statue behind them and they knew that no one was planning on thawing him out.

Real Robin was screaming on the ground, obviously not liking this part of her dream.

Tears fell behind the running girl's face and dropped to the steaming ground below them. "It's not over?" Usopp asked in horror as even with Saul gone, the bombardment of the island continued.

"She's the only one left! What are they still attacking for?" Sanji yelled furiously. "How can they call themselves 'justice?' They're worse than any pirate I've ever seen!"

No one could disagree and they'd all known some horrible pirates. Something like this though, none of them though it was possible.

"The scholars were slaughtered just because they wanted to learn," Chopper whispered as he looked back up at the running girl.

"Saul was killed because he tried to save them," Franky added tearfully.

"And they killed all the civilians for no REASON!" Nami screamed bursting in anger. She looked back at Kuzan who was standing next to Saul's body and looking towards Robin. She felt genuinely afraid for her best friend here.

"I've never seen something so horrible, I wish I could rip out my own eyes," Brook yelped. He didn't even add that he didn't have eyes to rip out, that was how enraged he was.

The bombs kept falling and the flames kept rising. Robin never stopped running once as everything burned around her. Her screams fell empty since there was no one around to hear her, everyone was dead.

"Maybe the scholars are still trying to save the books back at the..." Chopper started and looked that direction before freezing mid-sentence and falling back to his knees.

The Tree of Omniscience started to creak and then it began to topple. The Straw Hats were silent as the largest tree on the island began to fall. It was completely engulfed in flames and Chopper's idea that the archaeologists might still be alive was thrown away.

They couldn't even keep watching the tree as the vision shook. At first they thought it was from the tree hitting the ground, but then they saw her. Robin was running forward as an explosion hit behind her. She kept going and a second hit closer, before they knew what happened, one landed right next to her feet and sent her flying in the air a few feet.

It was horrible and they thought she was going to drop hard, but it wasn't the end and two more explosions knocked her spinning in midair before she fell to the ground and skid.

Her tears kept falling as now she was in physical pain along with everything that happened. "Ahh! Robin!" Most of them yelled.

Grown-up Robin was writhing on the ground and Luffy was biting his fingernails now. He couldn't stand to see her in the present or the past, but as Captain he had to be strong and couldn't look away.

She kept going once she struggled up and ran up a small hill over the trees. She was looking for the shore and saw which way she needed to go, but before she ran back down, she took a good look at the island.

The place she grew up in was no longer recognizable. Luffy was reminded of the Gray Terminal fire and how everything he could see was ablaze, but back then there had been the safety of the city and the outlying forest. Here there wasn't a speck on the island that wasn't roaring with fire and the crackling sound of burning trees. She looked so fearful that it was clear this one sight was etched into her memory for good, going to haunt her nightmares for years, decades to follow.

A cannonball fell out of the air and broke apart the cliff she was standing on. The hill wasn't too big, but she still rolled down the crumbled side and bounced off a rock before slamming back down to the ground.

The crew winced again at the amount of pain she was in.

After a few seconds of lying there, she managed to get herself to her feet and ran for the clearing. "Nice now she can get on the raft..." Nami ended her sentence by shrieking and they all looked ahead to see that child Robin froze as well and her tears even stopped on her face.

"Aokigi!" Luffy shouted at the admiral angrily.

He was sitting on a tree stump with a small row boat next to him. _"Absolute Justice,"_ he stated in a cold voice. _"It's been known to sometimes drive a person to madness. I've decided to let you escape from this island."_

Every one of the Straw Hats dropped their jaws. After everything he and the Marines had done, he was just going to leave the mission unaccomplished and let her go? Sanji nodded, he had definitely changed his view sometime during this event.

"I understand," Zoro was the first to regain himself. "To keep from going insane over what they just did here, he saved a single child. It may not have been enough to atone for their sins, but he felt it could keep him sane." He nodded his head, glad the man had made that decision.

_"A seed was protected by Saul, I wonder what it'll grow into."_ She looked at him with intense hatred that wasn't meant for a girl her age's face. The tears stuck on the bottom lid of her eye shook with the fury in her frown.

The tall man could sense this, _"It's your choice to hate whoever you want, but consider yourself lucky to still have your life."_

"I can't stand this guy," Franky shouted, wanting so much to hate the man who murdered Saul, but also having to thank him for saving Robin.

_"Try to live as plainly as you can. I left a trail of ice on the sea. Travel straight ahead with the small boat, and you'll reach land."_ He told her.

"She's a little girl and I don't see land for miles!" Chopper shouted.

Brook wondered out loud, "Does he even expect her to survive?"

He kept going, _"And then, always remember. I am not your ally."_

"Yeah you showed that quite clearly when you tried to kill her before Water 7!" Usopp shouted, remembering how they met Aokigi and he froze her and their captain.

Robin's mouth was wide open and she couldn't believe, or comprehend what was happening. Kuzan just got up and started to walk towards her and then past her, _"If you do something, I'll be the first enemy to come capture you."_

She sucked up all her fear and spun to the man walking away, _"My mom is on the island."_

He didn't even break his stride, _"No one will be saved. If it's so painful that you want to die, you're free to do so."_

The small bit of hope she still had was crushed in an instant. Suddenly all around the Straw Hats, they saw all the happy moments in the memory so far. The archaeologists surprising Robin, her mother's reunion with her, Saul telling her to be proud, they all whisked by as Nice Robin stared down at the floor. She knew that every one of those people were dead and was accepting it as they watched.

They could see that she was very close to just giving up. If she did, no one would have blamed her at this point.

She walked back though and got on the rowboat, paddling out with her tiny arms. Once she was a couple hundred feet from the shore, the memories were still coming all around her and they knew that they weren't the only ones seeing them. The young girl was thinking back on these things too.

_ '"Just laugh. When you have a hard time, just laugh."'_

_ '"If I laugh when I'm in pain, I'll look like an idiot."'_

_ '"That's not true!"' _memory Saul told her and it faded away with his laugh. All they could see was Robin slowly lifting up the paddles and pushing the water past her. The island getting further away was a burning bright light and the flames danced wickedly in front of them.

They found themselves standing on the water around her rowboat and just kept getting pulled along with her as she went. It was heart-wrenching to watch as Robin wiped away her tears and closed her eyes. She put a brave smile on her face and started, "Dereshishishi, Dereshi shi shi," she chuckled.

The laughs did nothing to help the Straw Hats. It was clear they were forced and it wasn't helping to make her feel better despite what Saul said. She released the paddles and curled up her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "Dereshi shi," she coughed and looked down so her head was between her knees too, "Dereshi, shi shi, dereshi," she laughed and every time it brought even the stronger members of the crew closer to tears.

Saul's face popped up around her and started laughing and she would mimic it each time. Soon the dereshis didn't sound like laughs anymore, but painful sobs that she stuttered out while trying to laugh.

"Make it stop," Chopper begged and clamped his ears shut with his hooves.

She did stop though, the laughs doing nothing to help. Her eyes were clenched shut but the tears seeped through and she lifted her head. The amount of pain she was in made every crew member take a step back at the look on her face.

"Ah ahhh ahha," she shouted in agony. The tears were filled with all the pain, suffering, and anguish of not only the night, but her entire life so far, and what was in store. Her childlike voice cried out louder and some of them looked around to make sure no Navy battleships could see her, "Ahhhhh, AHHHHH!"

The memory finally faded with Robin screaming and they were glad it was over. It was tough watching something like that, but they just wanted their Robin to be able to stop thinking about it. Unfortunately, it wasn't over.

_'79,000,000 beri?! An eight year old girl has such a large bounty?' _They all saw Robin hiding in an alleyway and start running as she heard the people reading the papers.

_ 'It seems she's a survivor of the famous Oharan Criminals, who were scheming to destroy the world."_

_ "That Ohara?'_

"That isn't what happened!" Nami shouted into the darkness as the voices continued.

"How scary must it have been for her?" Usopp questioned darkly. He couldn't imagine it and knew that he would have chosen death.

"I heard about Ohara," Franky said with a dark look in his eyes. "Like everyone else, I believed what the paper told me. Tom told me that the most dangerous person in the world... was Nico Robin."

The voice in the memory was quieter but they could still hear it, _'I don't know how she did it, but they say she sank six Marine battleships.'_

_ 'That's why they put such a high bounty...'_

"That's ridiculous!" Brook shouted but of course they couldn't hear him.

Young Nico Robin ran through the darkness and anytime the memory began to form around them, it was just a different environment with her crying softly and with a determined look on her face. She wasn't giving up. They saw the memory from earlier where Robin was walking alone through the snow, but unlike before they actually knew why she was by herself now and it tore at them.

They heard someone scream in the darkness of her memory. _"That child can't be allowed to live, she's the child of the devil!"_

"Please, let us stop watching!" Chopper yelled up at the sky, directly at the little girl who was speeding up the memories they had to watch.

Ignoring the reindeer, she showed them Robin with a smile on her face. _"Thanks for always helping out,"_ an old woman said to her as the girl outside was handing her a pile of hay.

_"No thank you for letting me work,"_ Robin replied.

_"We'll be having some guests before dinner,"_ all their eyes opened wide as Government officials appeared behind the old woman and started swarming Robin who slipped away. _"I told you where she is, now where's my money?!"_ The old woman ordered.

"People make me sick," Nami shuddered. Robin couldn't trust anyone, they were all deceiving her.

Next they saw Robin peeking in a doorway from a bedroom she was staying in. There were two men at a table, _"She's a good girl, but if she stays with us we'll be in danger too. Plus... Look at this bounty!"_ Lightning crackled outside the window with a huge blast of thunder. The light shone on the man's face she was staying with and in her mind he looked like a demon.

The horrified little girl went running to her window and jumped out. She still only had the small purple dress and nothing else to her belonging.

She ran for a while before sitting down tired. A dog ran up to her and she started making the dereshi noise as it barked. Just like everyone else though, it left her and they couldn't tell if it was the rain or just tears on her face. All of a sudden they heard a noise but it didn't sound like it was coming from the memory.

They all turned around fast and watched as Robin got to her feet. Her eyes were glazed over and she didn't move a muscle. The little girl decided to keep tormenting her and faces appeared all around them.

_ 'Shes the devil!"_

_ 'Your sin is just being alive!'_

_ 'The little runt is cursed!'_

_ 'Nico Robin,' _they froze at the sound of that voice and a few of them snarled. Only Franky and Brook were confused. They looked to see Crocodile turning around in a chair with a wide grin on his face,_ 'I want to borrow your power. It seems you can read the Poneglyph, am I right?'_

Their adult version of Robin stared around as bodies fell all around her. The early members of the Straw Hats recognized who they were. Half the people were dressed as the Royal Guards of Alabasta, and the others looked like the rebels.

They watched in horror as a slightly younger Nico Robin walked through the busy streets after the battle. She was limping and had a large cloak so no one would recognize her, but the crew could see her face. Robin was looking around at all the blood splattered on the walls, the piles of bodies lined up on the sides of the road. Her face was strained with guilt and it almost looked like she wasn't going to be able to keep walking.

"Enough," Luffy whispered and it seemed to snap everybody back to what was happening.

"Robin snap out of it," Nami yelled at her, "that isn't who you are anymore."

"I can't wipe away my sins, my hands..." she looked down and none of the others could see it, but in Robin's eyes they were soaked in red and dripping blood. "I can't wash away what I've done," she whispered.

"We all saw what happened," Franky told her, "it wasn't your fault you had to live like that." He still felt his heart lurching after watching Saul.

The others felt the same way, most of them thinking about the passenger ship. Every single person on the island, even the Marines who helped them board, were all engulfed in a ball of fire and burned alive.

"Ace!" The memory around them changed fast and they saw a younger version of Luffy on his knees.

Some of the crew ignored the memory change since Robin was in a dire state. She looked on the verge of self-destruction seeing too many sad and regretful memories at once.

The few who did look over dropped their jaws. Zoro, Usopp, and Chopper all gazed ahead in shock as a man jumped in front of the kneeling captain. A large man in a naval uniform stood with his molten fist completely through Luffy's brother's back.

Franky and Brook turned around and had seen the picture of the man before. They knew who he was and looked at Luffy who was staring in shock at the memory.

It was terrible and they watched the man pull his arm out of Ace's chest and his flames tried to heal him but couldn't. He dropped down and started to die as Luffy shouted for a doctor. The boy pulled his hand away from the hole on his older brother's back and saw red coating the entire thing.

_"My only regret,"_ they heard a whisper, _"is that I didn't get to see you fulfill your dream."_ Ace collapsed forward and dropped to the ground with blood splattered all around him.

On the other side of the memory they saw Robin standing back up on that rock cliff with her entire island burning around her.

Past Luffy started to wail at the top of his lungs and his rubber body allowed for his jaw to unhinge. His mouth was so far open that it didn't surprise them how loud his voice was. His screams made many members of the crew clench their ears.

Nami and Sanji had been trying to calm down their archaeologist friend but the two of them cast a quick glance back to see what the screaming was about. When they saw Luffy there next to his dead brother it made them want to scream as well.

Robin's memory started to get pushed to the side as it switched with Saul's slowly freezing body. In the place of the memory that had been there, a woman with pinkish hair appeared and Nami didn't pry her eyes away fast enough not to see her mother get shot in the heart again and blood to explode out.

She screamed and a few members looked in her direction to watch Bellemere get shot over and over again as Arlong laughed in the background.

"Nami!" Chopper shouted and turned to her. He grabbed her head and had her look down at the ground before his eyes went wide in terror.

The memory wasn't his own, but at this point they knew that the girl was definitely controlling the memories now and pushing them all off the edge.

Franky turned and ran towards the reindeer who was shaking in fear and regret, trying to get Brook to follow him. He saw the skeleton wasn't following and turned to see him staring above past Luffy's screaming form to where two men stood alone in a room.

_"Send me off, with my favorite song,"_ a man covered in some sort of sickness rasped. The musician holding a violin and looking very much like Brook started to play Binks Sale in a slow rhythm and with all the painful memories around them, it only made each one worse.

The man whispered while Brook was playing, _"You're the captain now Brook. Protect the crew with your life, I'm counting on you."_ The skeleton began to cry tears of sorrow at that.

"I'm sorry Captain Yorki!" He screamed, "I couldn't save a single one of our friends."

The robot saw it was hopeless and looked over to see if he could help the reindeer. Sanji was standing next to him and Nami, between the orange haired girl and Robin, turning back and forth yelling at them to calm down and that none of it was happening.

Usopp was staring ahead at the burning Going Merry and then it switched to him fighting Luffy and he couldn't tear his eyes away.

"It's all in the past!" Franky yelled as he finally got a good look at what Chopper was so afraid of. It wasn't his memory at all, but of Franky's. The monster in the image was of Chopper back in Enies Lobby and it was destroying everything, attacking his own friends even.

"I'm a monster!" He yelled and gripped his hair pulling it in different directions.

Nami reached over to calm him down but saw Genzo in the background get sliced a hundred times by Kuroobi and blood spurted out all over him. "AAAHH!" She screamed and fell backwards in horror.

Zoro knew he had to take control since Luffy was beyond taking command. He'd yelled at the captain to hold it together, but Luffy wasn't able to pry his eyes away from his brother's dead corpse as it lay inches away from him.

"Ero cook! Calm down Chopper first, then get him to help with the others. Brook!" He shouted loudly and the skeleton snapped out of it and turned to him, "Try to focus and help out! Franky," he yelled to the other member of the crew who seemed capable still, but the cyborg had stopped moving.

Tom's body lay in front of him with a large harpoon sticking out of his chest. The memory was shaking and it looked like a larger puddle of blood was spreading beneath Tom that wasn't there the first time. It was from Franky's own battleship and Zoro knew that he just lost him. She was getting stronger, even able to twist the memories now and they were losing it.

Zoro spun to go over and snap Luffy out of it himself, when he saw something that made him freeze in his tracks. In front of him, larger than all the smaller memories that people were focused on, there was on open coffin.

Sanji looked away immediately from the okama queens chasing memory him around in a dress and was somewhat glad that everyone else was staring at their own memories or hiding their faces; he didn't want any of then seeing that. _Especially Marimo, _he thought and turned to Zoro who he thought was trying to calm down Luffy, but the man was staring ahead at a giant memory version of what he must have seen.

Inside the humongous coffin was a girl. It looked as if the image had zoomed in and it only showed the girl with the large gash on her forehead that was covered in dried blood.

_"Close the coffin,"_ Sanji heard someone shout from next to kid Zoro who was holding a hand on the lid.

He needed to make sure for himself, Zoro remembered this moment very well. _"She was getting her whetstone for her sword, when she fell down the stairs,"_ a kid said next to him.

Another boy spoke up in a whisper, _"I don't know why she would, she never uses it anyway. We only train with the wooden ones,"_ kid Zoro's eyes widened and Sanji dropped his jaw too.

He knew that the girl had died that way, but only now did he put two and two together. The memory about Zoro's promise to her about becoming the best wasn't rough because of how he now had to fulfill their promise, that must have been the day before this flashback. _He thinks he killed her. She had to sharpen her sword because he challenged her to a fight, and she died because of it. _"Marimo!" He called over, about to say something.

"Don't," Zoro warned harshly before turning and running to Luffy. The blonde chef was stunned, he thought that even the shitty swordsman would be struck by that memory a little more. "None of this is real," he started shouting in a loud voice. Nami stopped her whimpering and Franky shook his head clear at the sound of his clear cut voice. "Get a grip you guys," he said and walked over to Luffy before punching him on the back of the head so his face hit the black floor.

"You're not that monster anymore," Sanji told Chopper and the small reindeer with the blue hat looked up at him. "Now you can control your powers and are still a monster, but you're our monster."

Chopper sniffled a little and managed to keep his eyes away from the giant rampaging beast below him.

Luffy realized at that moment that Ace was gone, but his crew was still there. Jimbei's words after the war flooded his mind and he got a grip before turning and thanking Zoro. Then he started running across the area where all his crew members were turning away from their memories.

"I was so close!" They heard the little girl in the sky scream. Almost all of them had been ensnared by her, but the few who weren't brought most of the rest back.

"Robin!" Luffy shouted and ran right up to her. In an unusual show of affection for their captain, he wrapped her in a huge hug and tackled her to the ground. "Saul was right!" He told her and her eyes snapped wide, losing a bit of their glossy coating. "There were nakama waiting for you out at sea. We're those nakama! No one is born alone in this world!"

Chopper wiped a tear away from his face and Nami brushed her arm across to wipe her own. "He always knows exactly what to say," she said as they watched Robin's eyes close and then snap back open with a small smile on her face.

"Luffy," she whispered and then looked up, "everyone."

"Ace died," Luffy called out as he backed away from her, "but I still have all of you! My nakama!"

The others all nodded with strong determined looks on their faces.

"No! This can't be happening! Those were your most powerful memories!" All the memories around them finally started breaking into wisps and it wasn't violent at all. They all vanished and the crew looked up to see the little girl floating above them.

"Those were our saddest memories," Nami shouted back in response, correcting the child. "The most powerful ones are the happy ones we spent together as a crew!" Each member agreed and the girl with pink hair got very nervous.

"I won't hit a girl," Sanji stated and turned around, not wanting to take part, but also not going to stop what was about to happen.

The rest of them all glared up at her with such an intensity that her fading powers stopped working and she couldn't make herself invisible. Robin crossed her arms and hands came out all over the girl's body, wrapping her up.

While she was immobile, the rest of the crew moved in and attacked. Zoro beat her with the back of his swords while Usopp wrapped her in vines with a pop green. Brook turned into a ghost and scared the shit out of her while Franky gave her a strong Right to the face. Nami zapped her with lightning and even Chopper jumped up and then plowed his hooves forward knocking the wind out of her. "Gum Gum," Luffy was the last one to add in an attack to the small woman covered in scrapes and bruises, "Bazooka!" He shouted and when his hands connected with her, the blackness around them shattered into pieces.

"We made it out!" Usopp cheered and pumped a fist in the air.

The girl went flying so far they couldn't see her anymore and the crew celebrated their escape with cheers and hollers.

"We made it!" Nami shouted and ran forward. Sanji held out his arms with hearts in his eyes but she picked up Chopper and squeezed him tight in a happy hug. He glared at the reindeer while a few of the others laughed.

After a few minutes of calming down, they all started walking back to the ship in relative silence. Then out of nowhere, Usopp said, "I feel a lot closer to all of you." No one stopped walking and they saw the Sunny getting closer. "I mean..." he whispered and then regained the confidence to keep going, "it sucked that we had to go through that, but I'm glad you all saw something that I never would have been able to share with you."

Brook thought for a moment and then stated in a happy tone, "I agree Usopp-san, it helps to know that I can share the burden of losing my crew."

"And getting Doctor killed," Chopper added with a sad smile.

"And Tom arrested," Franky agreed. "I'll never be able to lift that weight off my shoulders, but at least it's a little lighter with you guys to help armored me carry it."

The others said they were happy to help carry it and smiled before getting back to their normal selves and climbing on board their ship, ready to finally leave the island.

As the ship sailed away, Sanji walked up to Zoro on the side of the ship and removed the smoke from his mouth. He sucked up his usual anger at the swordsman and looked out over the water as he said, "I'll help you become the best," the green-haired man was stunned at the chef's words and didn't look at him. "If it's all for a lady, then how could I refuse?" Then he coughed and added, feeling weird with all the sentimental shit, "and if you need help carrying that burden."

Zoro knew that Sanji had figured out what he was living with and sighed. He wanted to insult the chef and tell him off, but he was too tired, at least that was the excuse he gave himself. Sanji was trying to help him, and he couldn't think of another time except for fighting Kuma when that had happened. "Sure whatever," he just mumbled and the chef started walking away.

Suddenly Zoro smirked evilly and tilted his head towards the chef, "Don't worry, I won't mention the dress to anyone," Sanji froze where he stood and his face turned red with anger and embarrassment.

If there was one person he didn't want knowing about that, it was him. He turned around slowly and saw that Zoro was dropping it there, like that was really the only time he would mention seeing Sanji in a dress.

"He wasn't the only one to see it though," Usopp giggled from the balcony of the kitchen. He just told the captain and he and Luffy started cracking up and rolling around on the floor again.

The two men looked up from the deck and Zoro grinned, "Eh, nothing I could do about that."

Sanji's body burst into flames, "USOPPPPP!"

**A/N Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the ending to Straw Hats Stuck in Memories. Yes, there are other memories the members didn't see, but I thought that was a great place to end. Twenty thousand words! WOO! I don't think I've ever uploaded a chapter that long before. To everyone who followed, favorited, and reviewed, thank you very much for making this such a successful story. For everyone who reads my other One Piece fanfics (and those who don't if you want to): One Piece Tourney, and Brook's Abduction, I'm going to take a small hiatus from them and try writing a One Piece and Kingdom Hearts crossover, still don't know what I'm gonna call it. Once again hope you enjoyed, now time for the reviews!**

Black Night Wolf

Yippee you updated ;). Anyway another great chapter and I can't wait for more. So I hope you update soon and I wish you the best of luck :).

**Glad you liked it and I tried not to make you wait too long. Robin had a whole lot of baggage so it was an extra long chapter ;). And Thanks!**

Ralman23

Thanks its actually the one where escapes from Law's after Marineford. Just research dark luffy and this is the first it comes up. Anyway like the Franky flashback and Usopp forgiving him. really touching to the heart-bro, oh sorry aniki! (Does a super pose except in the opposite direction)

**Haha, thanks for the review. Yeah I remember that scene, it was pretty heart-wrenching itself, but I felt that whole thing wound up being too happy when Jimbei told him about his nakama so it would've been a happy memory. **

Ashlielle

Wow! I didn't read this story before now because I thought it would be like all the other ones, but this is great! I love the way the story goes, most of the added parts, and I can't wait for the next chapter!  
*hands you a cookie* Because cookies are cool, yo.

***Eats cookie... DELICIOUS thanks! Hope you liked the new chapter even if it took a while to read. And I'm glad it's unique from the other memory stories you've read!**

Daseki no Kama

can't wait for the next chapter!

**Here you go!**

RedZoro

Poor Robin she is the more touch by all her memories, I possibly cry for her.  
Thar chapter was really good and make Franky regret his act was a really good idea.

**Just proofreading the chapter a few minutes ago I was on the verge of tears. Thanks, I'm glad I included that chapter 'cuz I almost thought about just making this one Chapter 7, but decided what the heck! I'm happy you read this when I posted the first chapter and have stayed by it to the end. Thank you very much!**

**And that's my first One Piece Fanfic completed. Thanks again to everyone who reviewed and anyone who read the story to the end. Have a great day!**


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